Here's an interesting footnote in the adventures of Booster Gold.

George Morrow at CBR.com recently referenced a 2006 Comicon.com Pulse article in which Jennifer M. Contino interviewed comedian Patton Oswalt, writer of JLA: Welcome to the Working Week, about his "upcoming" contribution to the Justice League Unlimited comic book:

THE PULSE: Out of all the superhero cartoons that have come and gone, what do you like the best about JLU?

OSWALT: The wide-ranging aspect. Also, they don't just focus on the Big 5. I also like what they do with the villains. I wish they'd just do an Injustice Society cartoon. Wow!

THE PULSE: That would be cool. What is your JLU story about? How did you get involved with doing a story for that imprint?

OSWALT: Well, I tried out to be the monthly writer, but they thought a lot of my story pitches blew. But there was one they liked, which involves Booster Gold and The Atomic Knight. So that's the one I'm doing.

THE PULSE: Out of the zillions of heroes in the JLU universe, how did you settle on Booster Gold and the Atomic Knight?

OSWALT: I thought of the kind of story I'd like to tell first, and then went through my old Who's Who and figured out who'd be the best characters to tell that story emotionally. We'll see.

As we all know by now, we didn't see. Justice League Unlimited was cancelled in 2008, never having included any story crossing Booster Gold with the Atomic Knights. But Oswalt is very correct that it would make a great pairing.

Every Booster booster knows that Booster Gold arrived in our "present day" on August 20, 1985, a date our hero selected in part because it occurred before a nuclear conflict of the late 20th century (Booster Gold #14). But what you may not have realized is that the nuclear war of Booster's future history was better known as The Great Disaster of the DC Universe, and according to the heroic Atomic Knights, it happened in October 1986 ("Rise of the Atomic Knights", Strange Adventures #117).

Given that the goal of the Atomic Knights was to rebuild society after the disaster, a crossover story between them and future rags-to-riches success story Booster Gold would be a good story set-up!

In hindsight we know definitively there was no nuclear disaster in the DCU in 1986. Superman discovered that the original stories of the Atomic Knights were all fictional simulations (in DC Comics Presents #57, 1983), and the post-Crisis on Infinite Earths Atomic Knights would go on to aid the city of Bludhaven after a scaled-down nuclear event in Crisis Aftermath: Battle for Bludhaven — a mini-series drawn by Dan Jurgens!

Will we ever get to read Oswalt's story? Only time will tell.

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The Justice League Unlimited returns to your Local Comic Shop today for their first new adventure since 2008 in Justice League Infinity #1.

The issue is co-written by Justice League International scribe J.M. DeMatteis, so you just know there are going to be some old-fashioned Blue and Gold antics.

I say let him eat cake!

Justice League Infinity is only a seven-issue mini-series, but if that's not enough Justice League Unlimited for you, DC has also released a new reprint collection of old JLU comics, Justice League Unlimited: Girl Power. Despite its focus on female heroes, Booster makes small appears in two of the stories in that reprint. Some Booster Gold is always better than no Booster Gold.

Buy either of these books and make Skeets happy!

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OG Booster booster Shawn Baston notified me that Booster makes a very brief, non-continuity appearance in this week's Teen Titans Academy #4 (thanks, Shawn!). Since I was already in the Boosterrific Database, I decided to take the time to (finally!) update data on some other minor reprint collection appearances I'd been putting off. That's when I noticed something odd.

Justice League Unlimited: Time After Time is a collection of time-travel themed Justice League Unlimited stories. The volume was published last November. (Sorry. Like I said, I got a little behind. I'm blaming the pandemic.) This is its cover:

Usually, these trades reuse cover art from one of the issues they collect, but this one clearly needed something a bit more general for the hodgepodge of volumes within. Instead of an existing cover, art was chosen from an existing interior splash page.

The chosen art comes from Justice League Unlimited #9, credited to penciller Carlo Barberi and inker Walden Wong and reprinted in Time After Time. The issue's story sees the JLU travel back in time to help Shining Knight save Camelot from Morgan Le Fey, and the selected art has some of the DCU's biggest names flying into action alongside King Arthur — swinging on a Batrope! That's an image that will sell some comics!

There's just one problem. To make the existing art fit the desired cover layout, it had to be altered. And I don't just mean that the art was recolored to remove the backgrounds. One hero was edited out of the picture entirely.

Care to guess who that hero was?

Here's the splash page as it originally appeared:

Poor Booster!

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I spent a lot of time in 2020 showcasing the best Booster Gold comics. But Booster Gold appears in plenty of other comics that while maybe not great are still pretty darn good.

Take, for one example, Justice League Unlimited #17, released 15 years ago today. The issue's story, "Let Freedom Ring" by Adam Beechen, Carlo Barberi, Lary Stucker, Heroic Age, and Phil Balsom, is based in the continuity of the excellent animated series of the same name and is, at its core, little more than a cliché excuse to have some good old-fashioned hero-on-hero super fisticuffs. As stale as the concept may be, there's plenty of fun in the execution.

But don't take my word for it; see for yourself. Here I've condensed the issue to remove most of the panels Booster Gold doesn't appear in (which is how I read most comic books).

As you can see, Booster doesn't play a very big part, but that doesn't mean the issue isn't a joy to read.

I assure you, the panels that Booster aren't in are just as good. (There's an especially entertaining bit between Superman and the Human Bomb.) If you get a chance to read the full issue, I recommend you do so. You won't be sorry.

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I'm a little late to post this, as the edition now seems to be entirely sold out, but that's no reason not to marvel that such a Boosterrific poster as this exists in the world.

That's the Warner Bros officially licensed Justice League Unlimited poster by Dave Perillo released via Grey Matter Art back in May. There were two editions, the normal one you see above and a foil edition. The Blot has pictures of both on Twitter.com.

Sorry about that, everybody. I'll try to pay better attention ion the future.

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