If you think about it, we owe the longevity of our hero to the success of 1987's Justice League reboot which launched 30 years ago yesterday.

Although Dan Jurgens created a unique and endearing character in Michael "Booster" Carter, it was the character's inclusion in J.M. DeMatteis and Keith Giffen's reboot of DC's flagship team (and specifically his relationship with Blue Beetle) that cemented Booster Gold's place in the DCU. Without the JLI, Booster Gold probably would have faded to the same sort of neverland as other lesser known DC characters like Geo-Force or Blue Devil.

In celebration of the anniversary, the Irredeemable Shag interviewed DeMatteis for a very special edition of the Justice League International: Bwah-Ha-Ha Podcast. The writer admitted that Booster Gold held a unique place in the series.

Shag: Favorite JLI members. Give me like two or three.

DeMatteis: Well, Beetle and Booster for sure. Because in so many ways, they're the heart and soul of the book. ... I love the banter, and I love that we continued to play with them.

We love it too!

You can find the whole podcast interview, which covers the JLI from their inception, through their name changes, and into the year 3000, at fireandwaterpodcast.com.

Something tells me we'll still be celebrating the JLI when it's 60th anniversary rolls around. In every medium, great entertainment endures.

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Pal Shag! of FirestormFan.com called our attention to this Booster Gold cosplayer on Twitter earlier this week.

This is a cosplayer we've seen before. He's attended conventions dressed as Booster Gold for the past three years! He wore this costume to last year's HeroesCon and he wore the collared variant to DragonCon 2013. I love the persistence.

For the record, this pic was posted by @TrekkerTalk. Big thanks to both Trekker Talk and Shag! And unknown cosplayer, whoever you are, keep up the good work!

UPDATE 2015-06-23: The cosplayer has been identified Jay Tallsquall. Thanks to Pyynk for the identification.

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So here's how this comic book character blogging thing works:

Earlier this week, I paid a visit to The Irredeemable Shag's FirestormFan.com, which just happened to be running a post on the "Great Heroes" DC trading cards from 1987. They were trading cards printed on backing boards included with 3-pack comic books in the late 1980s. I'd never heard of these before. Could there be a Booster Gold?

For more information, I followed Shag's link to CosmicTeams.com, where, thanks to the assistance of Michael Kooiman, I can now show you this, the first Booster Gold trading card, copyright 1989:

The card was just one of 8 on its original board. You can see a picture of the whole board at Kooiman's slideshow of the entire set at ComicTeams.com.

This card has been added to the Boosterrific.com archive of Other Media appearances. But while Michael was giving me the pic for the card above, he graciously forwarded a great scan of the one and only Booster Gold pog from SkyBox in 1993!

My thanks to Michael (and Shag!) for helping make Boosterrific.com more complete than ever.

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I'm not typically a podcast guy (I can't listen at work, and I have more than enough to listen to otherwise), but that doesn't mean that I don't recognize talent when I hear it. (Well, actually, people tell me I have a tin ear. But never mind that now.)

Shag of FirestormFan.com and Siskoid of Siskoid's Blog of Geekery have teamed-up to present a new podcast about role-playing games. Their first installment is about the Mayfair Games DC Heroes Role-Playing Game. Booster Gold fans should recognize that as the first game to feature Booster Gold as a playable character — in the mid 1980s!

DC Heroes Role-Playing Game featured stats for both Booster Gold and Skeets, as well as a Booster Gold-themed module, "All That Glitters," that included Goldstar and Jack Soo.

You can find previous Boosterrific Blog posts about Booster's role in the game here. Boosterrific.com also hosts a single-player Flash version of the board game from the "All That Glitters" DCHRPG module here.

So if you're the sort who likes to listen to people talk about long-discontinued role-playing games, give the Fire and Water podcast a try. You might be glad you did.

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It looks like gamers are soon to be getting a double dose of Booster Gold.

As noted last week by the Irredeemable Shag! at FirestormFan.com, Booster will be included in the New 52-inspired Justice League Chess Set being produced a piece at a time by Eaglemoss. Booster will be a pawn in the set, but so will be Captain Marvel Shazam, Supergirl, and Power Girl, so at least he has some pretty good company. Eaglemoss has already given us one awesome Booster Gold figure, so there is a firm foundation to expect a great Booster Gold chess piece whenever it is released.

The other place we'll be seeing Booster Gold is as a playing card in the Heroes Unite expansion for the DC Comics Deck-Building Game. ICv2.com has details about the game itself, and BleedingCool.com speculates that this was the project that the R.B. Silva Instagram pictures were teasing back in January. Whether that is true or not, odds are that this, too, will feature Booster in his New 52 togs.

No dates or pics yet for either product, but hopefully both will be available before the end of the year, so plan ahead and start saving now, Boosterphiles!

(Thanks to Shag and Morgenstern for pointing these out.)

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