Childhood is a time of learning about the world around you and preparing you for the future. But what if your childhood won't happen for another few centuries and your future is in the past? That's the case for time-traveling hero Booster Gold, whose 25th-century upbringing may not have prepared him for 21st-century life.

HEALTHCARE: In the 2460s, Michael "Booster" Carter's mother will be diagnosed with a fatal degenerative disease that can only be treated in a specialized zero gravity facility on the moon. Certainly, such an operation is beyond the reach of 21st-century science, but it will present Booster with a problem all too familiar to present-day Americans: where to get the money to pay for it?

Secret Origins #35

It's more than a little disappointing that life-saving healthcare will remain beyond the reach of too many even 400 years from now. Booster's solution will change his life not for the better, however, the lesson he will learn and a sympathetic understanding of the problems facing citizens in all eras will be an asset for the hero he will eventually become.

TRANSPORTATION: For about as long as there have been automobiles, prognisticators have been predicting that they will one-day fly. And they're right. By the 25th century, even school busses will take to the air.

Booster Gold #15

When Booster Gold debuted in Metropolis, he had super strength and an invulnerable force field. Yet ordinary 16-year-olds had a power he didn't: the ability to drive an eathbound car. No wonder his first 20th-century vehicle was a chauffeured limousine!

HOLIDAYS: If, like Charlie Brown, you think that Christmas has gone too commercial in the 21st century, you probably don't want to see how they celebrate the holiday in the year 2462.

Booster Gold #15

Each December, Booster Gold must feel right at home no matter what century he's in.

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Childhood is a time of learning about the world around you and preparing you for the future. But what if your childhood won't happen for another few centuries and your future is in the past? That's the case for time-traveling hero Booster Gold, whose 25th-century upbringing may not have prepared him for 21st-century life.

SPORTS: The most popular sport in the mid 2400s will be familiar to 21st-century inhabitants. Aside from some minor technological innovations like sensors on the goal line to detect touchdowns, the sport will look and play in ways pretty much exactly as it had 400 years earlier. Someone watching a game in 1982 would have little trouble following the action in 2442.

Even the economics of the sport will be little changed. Just as in the 21st century, 25th-century college athletes will be considered "amateurs" who earn their institutions and commercial partners — and bookmakers — considerable revenue while making no income themselves.

Booster Gold #18

Though at the time, star quarterback Michael "Booster" Carter wouldn't have cared about such things, mastering the game of football would be a great indoctrination in 21st-century culture.

DIET: Soy dogs might have seemed far-fetched to citizens of 1987, but meat substitutes are all the rage in the 2020s as they will be in the Gotham City of the 25th century. We can only imagine what will make the population of the future turn their back on meat. Is it a commercial necessity following the Great Disaster? Is it an ethical consideration for animal welfare? Or do soy dogs just plain taste better than 20th-century hot dogs?

Whatever the case, by the 25th century, science will have advanced enough that people can have a different relationship with food than 21st-century diners. In Booster Gold's native time, gourmands will be able to eat whatever they like without fear of unhealthy weight gain.

Justice League Quarterly #6

That system sure beats rice cakes.

ROBOTS: In the 21st century, artificial intelligence really isn't very intelligent. Speech recognition software can decipher what television channel you want to watch and scanning algorithms can unlock your phone, but Siri isn't thinking or feeling in the traditional sense. That will have changed drastically by the year 2462.

Booster Gold will be raised in a world in which self-sufficient robots can be counted on to reliably perform many complicated jobs, including valet and security guard. There's plenty of evidence between the panels of Booster's adventures to suggest the only thing keeping robots from becoming further integrated into society is resistance from biological lifeforms.

Booster Gold #16

Thinking robots may not exist in the 21st century, but bigotry is eternal.

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UPDATE 2021-04-21: This post was originally sent live on April 21, 2021, but I have backdated it to clear the deck for some more important news!

The Flash 769 arrives in your Local Comic Shop this week. As you can see from the cover, Gold Beetle features prominently.

Says Barry Allen: "She looks like...well...like both of...you know." And that's as close as this issue gets to name-dropping Booster Gold.

The Gold Beetle in this issue is a fast talking, brash time traveler with a painfully strong Dr. Who vibe. The accoutrements and mannerisms aren't a perfect match to GB's first appearance (in Future State Suicide Squad, also written by Jeremy Adams), but as with the encounters with The Doctor, there's no guarantee we're meeting her in chronological order. Time Travel Is Complicated.™

Which brings us to today's big question: should Boosterrific.com be tracking Gold Beetle appearances? When I put the site together 14 years ago, it honestly didn't occur to me that I might need to be tracking Booster Gold legacy characters. It didn't occur to me until earlier this year, in fact.

I do track Booster's sidekicks. I've logged independent Skeets appearances (though that's only happened a few times in JLA trophy rooms), but Goldstar had never yet appeared in a book without Booster. Should I be logging Gold Beetle appearances somewhere? Given that this is only GB's third appearance, maybe I can put that decision off until later.

Meanwhile, if you absolutely have to have a new comic with Booster Gold in it, there's always the Who's Who Omnibus Volume 1, a 1320-page hardcover reprint of most of DC's late 80's Who's Who encyclopedias, including Booster's entry in the Who's Who Update '87. It costs $150, but such is the price of nostalgia on glossy archival paper.

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Assuming you live in a place where your weekly comics shipments haven't been affected by blizzards or power outages or shipping delays, you'll find this at your Local Comic Shop today:

Despite having a different title and being marked as issue number one, this is the second half of Generations: Shattered, released last month. You can find a preview online at comic-watch.com.

Also available today is Future State: Suicide Squad #2, which continues the adventures of Gold Beetle. Her connection to Booster is made clearer in this issue, with a brief cameo by none other than our beloved Chronal Crusader plus a significant role for Skeets in the era of DC One Million!

Buy both of them and make Skeets happy.

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This is week four of DC's Future State event, and Booster Gold still hasn't appeared in any of the books.

But now Gold Beetle has.

That's cropped from the very last panel (Spoiler Alert!) of the backup story in Future State: Suicide Squad #1. The back-up feature is titled "Future State: Black Adam, Chapter One: The Beginning of the End," written by Jeremy Adams with art by Fernando Pasarin, Oclair Albert, Jeromy Cox, Wes Abbott.

The story takes place in the DC One Million era of the 853rd century, but that's about all we know about Gold Beetle so far. (I mentioned it's the last panel, right?) We can guess that If Gold Beetle appears in the 30th century in Flash #769 next month, she must be some kind of time traveler, right?

Maybe we'll find out more in Future State: Suicide Squad #2 on February 23. Meanwhile, make Skeets happy and buy this comic.

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