To all of my fellow Americans waking up early on a weekend to watch the much ballyhooed wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, know that you're not alone.

Booster Gold loves royal weddings, too. (He's been to all of them.)

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Remember that time that Booster Gold went back in time and changed history? Obviously, I'm talking about "Blue & Gold," a story written by Jeff Katz and Geoff Johns running between Booster Gold Volume 2 #0 and #1,000,000.

(No, there weren't one million issues in the story. Issue #0 was released in February and issue #1,000,000 came out in July. Issues #6, #7, #8, #9 — released 10 years ago today — and #10 came out in between, so it's only a 7-part story. Comics numbering can be weird.)

The premise of "Blue & Gold" is that Booster Gold, who has altered time for entirely selfish reasons, finds that the new timeline he has accidentally created is far, far worse than anything he could have imagined. Heroes have died. Villains are victorious. And the worst of it is that Booster has no idea how to fix the problems he created...

Hmm. Why does this feels so familiar?

Only a comic book character could learn so little from his own history.

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That Civil Rights crusader Martin Luthor King Jr. was killed by an assassin's bullet on this day in 1968 at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, is a fact no one disputes. What is disputed is who pulled the trigger.

James Earl Ray, a career criminal, pleaded guilty to the crime and accepted a sentence of life imprisonment rather than face a jury trial with the death penalty on the line. Three days later, Ray recanted his admission and would maintain for the rest of his life that he hadn't been the trigger man. King's wife and children sided with Ray, blaming MLK's death on a criminal conspiracy reaching from the Mafia all the way to the top of the United States government.

Was Ray guilty? Did someone else shoot the gun that killed MLK? The only way to know the truth might be to go back in time and take a look for ourselves.

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For nearly two decades, Blue Beetle and Booster Gold were best friends. First meeting when Booster joined Max Lord's Justice League International, the pair formed a bond strong enough to overcome the gravest challenges. Their shared pranks and misadventures, exemplified by infamous Club JLI on KooeyKooeyKooey, became the stuff of legend. Those were good times.

The good times ended thirteen years ago today with the release of Countdown to Infinite Crisis.

It's a testament to the relationship between the two heroes (and a perfect example of the value of continuity) that their unexpected and violent parting continues to inform Booster Gold's story all these years later.

See you in the funny pages, Ted.

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Not so long ago, Erin of Exploring the Time Lab was ruminating on some older comics she wanted to read. Included in her list was Blasters Special #1, which just happens to have been released 29 years ago today.

Art by James Fry, Robert Campanella, Carl Gafford

The Blasters were a space-faring group of super heroes spinning out of the Invasion! event. (I always think of them as a second-rate Omega Men.) Their biggest claim to fame was the inclusion of cast-off JLA mascot Snapper Carr, who had gained the ability to teleport by snapping his fingers. Snapper's inclusion in the Blasters was short lived (as were the Blasters themselves: their entire career was limited to Invasion, this one shot, and a couple of issues of Valor). Snapper would eventually move on to support the DC One Million-incarnation of Hourman in his own title.

So far as Booster Gold is concerned, his brief cameo in Blasters Special is limited entirely to the two-page spread pictured above. Of special note is the fact that this is the only time to date Booster has appeared on-panel with lesser known DC Comics heroes Brother Power the Geek or Shade the Changing Man. Oddly, Booster Gold wouldn't appear on panel with any of the Blasters until 2007, when he finally crossed paths with Snapper Carr at the wedding of Green Arrow and Black Canary.

There you go, Erin. Now you know what you've been missing.

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