As Booster booster Rob Snow alerted me, after months of Booster Gold references, we actually get to see our hero on panel in this weeks' Fire & Ice: Welcome to Smallville #5!

Is it just me, or is it starting to feel like none of the New 52 continuity applies anymore? I feel like I opened a comic book to find Bobby Ewing taking a shower. (If you don't get that reference, kids, you're on the wrong website. Your homework is to go watch something from back when television was good, specifically the 1985 Dallas season 9 episode, "Blast from the Past.")

The events of this series have some really weird, life-threatening things happening, things that it would seem would not go unnoticed by a particular Man of Steel. Things like several gristly murders and much destruction of property. Makes me wonder why the story's setting is Smallville and not a suburb of Gotham, where these sorts of things wouldn't attract so much attention amidst the psycho clowns and sewer-dwelling crocodile-men.

The solicitation text for next month's mini-series final issue teases "the fate of Smallville itself hangs in the balance!" After reading issue 5, I can believe it.

Buy this issue and make Skeets happy.

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Every day, I get a new email notifying me that someone on the Internet is talking about James Gunn's announced Booster Gold show. They don't have any new details, mind you, because there aren't any new details.

But I appreciate their enthusiasm. From their breathless clickbait, you'd think the character had never been on TV before. How soon everyone forgets Smallville.

To be fair to them, it has been over a decade since the CW cancelled that show after ten seasons. In fact, it's been exactly 10 years to the day since Booster's last appearance in the Smallville Season 11 comic book. Issue #15, to be specific.

At the time, Booster had been teleported to the 31st century to help the Legion of Super-Heroes save Metropolis. And Booster delivered as only he could.

I'm excited for a new Booster Gold television series, too. I'm looking forward to a new generation of audiences seeing a real hero in action again.

(While I'm on the topic of Smallville comics, I must admit that looking into this issue I realized that I had somehow failed to catalog Booster's cameo in Smallville Season 11 Special #5 and the reprint collections Smallville Season 11 Volume 8: Chaos and Smallville Season 11 Volume 9: Continuity. I think I've got all the Smallville appearances now, but feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.)

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Many, many of you seem very excited about this Cable vs Booster Gold DEATH BATTLE!, so let's just go ahead and watch it, shall we? (The really good stuff starts at about 13:20, just after the Blue Apron ad.)

Hmmm. Let's see. Booster Gold's force field is strong enough to stop Superman, so yeah, it'd stop whatever Cable could throw at it. But mind control? I'm not sure that scans.

Booster Gold traditionally has a real problem with mind control. See: Justice League Annual #1, Justice League #6, Justice League International #17, Eclipso: The Darkness Within #2, Justice League America #59, Time Masters: Vanishing Point #4, Year of the Villain: Hell Arisen, to name a few examples to the contrary.

For the record, despite what the video says, it wasn't Booster's force field that saved his memories in Justice League: Generation Lost. Booster himself assumes in issue #2 that the four members of the JLI that were unaffected by Max Lord's re-writing of history were saved by the mechanics of Lord's broadcast (much in the same way that radio waves directed outward from radio antennas fail to send a signal to the base of the tower). Then Lord seems to say in issue #5 that he left them their memories on purpose. Either way, the force field deserves no credit.

But why let a few technicalities distract from a fun time, eh?

(I *really* should keep my mouth shut here. Death Battle has 4.5 million subscribers, which makes it very likely that more people will see Booster Gold for the first time in this YouTube video than any other singe occasion in the character's history. For comparison, the Smallville episode "Booster" — broadcast on this day in 2011 — was watched by a mere 2.3 million people. Death Battle for the win!)

Thanks to all who sent me the link.

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Eric Martsolf has been playing Brady Black on the daytime soap opera Days of Our Lives since 2008. But Booster Gold fans know him better as the only person to date to play a live action Booster Gold on television.

Martsolf was recently interviewed by Canadian television website, GlobalTV.com, where he doubled down on his earlier comments about the legacy of playing Booster Gold.

GlobalTV.com: From playing various roles in shows such as Days of Our Lives, Passions, and Global's own NCIS, what has been your favourite role to date?

Eric: Besides Brady Black it would have to be Booster Gold from the Smallville series because I got to fly. I got to show Clark Kent how to be Superman and it was just cool. I got a lot of credit with my kids because at the age that they were at, they truly believed that I could shoot lasers out of my wrists and if they misbehaved they thought I was going to shoot a laser at them. That role has just given me a lot back.

Booster Gold is the role that keeps on giving.

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Booster Gold fans will recognize actor Eric Martsolf as the first (and so far only) actor to play our hero in a live action production. (For the record, that was on the Smallville episode "Booster" airing April 22, 2011 as the 18th episode of the series' 10th season. Remember this?)

Martsolf is still acting on daytime television and was recently interviewed by Michael Maloney for TV Insider during which he reminisced about his Smallville days.

TV Insider: You got to play humor when you played Booster Gold on Smallville. How much fun was that?

Martsolf: That was my favorite role to date. It was funny, heroic, a comic book come to life; I loved getting to play someone who's completely larger than life. I got credit from my kids for playing a character who's a member of the Justice League. I still have [fans] from the DC Universe and the Smallville world hit me up on social media, trying to get a Booster Gold movie going on, but now I may have to settle for playing his dad. Then again, he is a time traveler.

TV Insider: Was there anything from the Smallville episode you got to keep? Probably not the Booster Gold costume!

Martsolf: No, that custom-made to my body leather outfit, I think, was more expensive more than my first house was! I did get to keep several of the Booster Gold fan club shirts [that were in the show as a story point]. At the end of the episode, I, as Booster, throw one to Clark (Tom Welling) and say, 'You're an XL, right, Clark?' I remember after the scene I gave Tom a hug [goodbye] and he said take as many of those shirts as you want.

Booster's dad, Jonar Carter, is a thoroughly bad seed. If When Booster ever returns to the screen, Jonar would make a great antagonist. And Martsolf would get another shot at keeping his own "body leather outfit," this time as the masked Supernova. Yes, I would definitely watch that.

(The t-shirt Martsolf mentions seen in the episode, by the way, was the Booster Gold Fan Club t-shirt released in 2009 by Graphitti Designs under license of DC Comics with art by Dan Jurgens.)

You can read the whole article, mostly about Martsolf's experiences on the soap operas Days of Our Lives and Passions, at TVInsider.com.

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