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.â„¢

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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Last week, we considered the question:

Who is... Gold Beetle in Future State?

Thanks to GamesRadar.com, we now have the beginning of an answer. As we suspected, she very much looks to have something to do with Blue Beetle and Booster Gold. Perhaps their great-great-great-something granddaughter? (The 30th century is very far away.)

THE FLASH #769
written by JEREMY ADAMS
art by DAVID LaFUENTE
and BRANDON PETERSON
cover by BRANDON PETERSON
card stock variant cover by ZI XU
After an accident pushes Wally West into the time stream, the former Kid Flash lands in the body of his onetime partner, Impulse. Now sprinting through the 30th century side by side with the mysterious (and, yeah, ridiculous) Gold Beetle, Wally must uncover what's causing the destructive explosions that keep propelling him through time and the bodies of other speedsters.
On sale April 20, $3.99 US
CARD STOCK VARIANT COVER $4.99 US

So now we know that Gold Beetle won't be appearing until *after* Future State runs its two-month course. Unless she gets a cameo appearance at the end of Future State: The Flash #2, which I suppose we'll know when that issue is released on February 2.

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