Booster Gold #4

You still have until midnight to file, Booster. Better hurry up.

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An assortment of small news items about recent events here at Boosterrific.com:

1. Thanks once again to Jake J for pointing out that the Boosterrific Database was missing several reprint collections, most recently Elseworlds: Justice League Volumes One, Two, and Three. Thanks for all your help, Jake J (who has emailed reminds me that he is NOT Jake. Sorry!).

2. While trying to make sense of the timeline in "Roses Are Red, Androids Are Blue" in DC's How to Lose a Guy Gardner in 10 Days, I stumbled across a previously undocumented one-panel Booster Gold appearance in JLA #119. Every time I think I've found them all, another appearance turns up. I love it!

3. If you didn't know it, a new, 2nd edition of the 2019 25th Anniversary Zero Hour: Crisis in Time Omnibus was released this week. I haven't seen it yet, but it is advertised as collecting "every chapter in the groundbreaking saga in chronological order." Does this 2nd edition include Booster Gold #0? (To the best of my knowledge, the 2019 edition did not.) If anyone can confirm or deny, please let me know.

4. Last week DC announced that their comics will once again be released on Wednesdays instead of Tuesdays beginning in July. When that happens, I'll be moving New Release updates to Wednesdays more consistently, just as I used to do. So don't say I didn't warn you.

5. To whomever reached out via the Boosterrific Contact form and asked "is it possible to anonymously submit in this contact": I cannot respond to your request because you didn't include a reply-to address, but the answer is mostly "yes." I do get to see the IP address that generated the request (which is necessary as an anti-spam measure), so if I look into that, I can approximate where you were in the world when you sent it. But otherwise, yeah, pretty vague.

6. If you haven't noticed, I created some more ads for the top of the pages during some recent downtime. You can see all of them on the Boosterrific Ads page. (I do tag them all internally as ads, so if you have an ad-blocker running, you may need to disable it to see them.)

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Ok, I admit, I still haven't seen Blue Beetle. I will, eventually, I promise. Maybe soon, in fact. It's scheduled for release on DVD next week, and to promote that release, director Ángel Manuel Soto recently spoke to Andy Behbakht for screenrant.com.

ScreenRant: Speaking about the future, we have the post-credits scene with Ted Kord. In your head, do you know what that reunion is going to look like between Ted and Jenny? That is a father-daughter relationship I want to learn more about.

Soto: Well, definitely! Our initial joke with that was, Jaime and Jenny would be talking later, and he showed up and they [Jaime and Ted] are like, 'Who are you? That's your dad?!' between them. But I think by doing it this way opens up more of a curiosity to where is he and why is he sending this message today? Why did he leave? What did he go out to do and I think it opens a lot of doors.

For me, I always liked the idea of him and Booster Gold doing adventures and then this message being sent as a warning of something that eventually Booster Gold is the one that's able to bring Jaime into the mix, or tap Kord's expertise through Booster's time travelling powers. So for me, one of those things I definitely [want to see] are Booster Gold and Ted Kord, I want them to be a part of Jaime's future. There's a lot more that exist in all the different iterations but the Blue and Gold series is phenomenal. Their relationship is really, really awesome and a lot of Jaime's relationships with both of them are iconic, so I hope it goes that way.

ScreenRant: How funny that we have a Booster Gold TV show coming with James Gunn's DC Universe! Without spoiling it, have you and James talked about Jaime's future? Do you know your next project with DC Studios, and have you discussed what you want to do with Jaime next?

Soto: Yeah, we have had conversations about it and that's where he mentioned to me about the Booster Gold TV show that is coming up. Now, where does it fit, how is it gonna play out? We haven't talked about that. But we both have talked about our interest in continuing Jaime's story, and finding a way for that story to be a part of this new universe.

It sounds like it's still far too early to talk about what exactly Gunn's Booster Gold television show is going to be. But if it's Ted Kord and Booster Gold's misadventures through time, that sure would qualify as "must see" TV.

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Late last week, Booster booster J sent me a bunch of new sighting of old ads to update the list of Boosterrific Advertisements. However, one of his finds is this:

That house advertisement comes from Flashpoint Companion, a collection of promotional material — mostly cover art — supporting the Flashpoint event.

So far as I can determine, Flashpoint Companion was a digital only release originally published online in 2012 at read.dccomics.com. Although DC discontinued that subdomain URL in 2013, you can still read it free online via DC Infinite, Google Play, Apple Books, or Amazon (and probably many others).

Other than this two-page spread — essentially a glorified reading list — the only actual "story" inside the book is a two-page "The Origin of the Flash" written by Scott Beatty (which, according to his blog, scottbeatty.blogspot.com, was originally created as a Converse shoe promotion, probably sometime around 2008-2009, as I believe it was included in the DC Universe: Origins collection of the 2-page origins published in 2010 Never mind. It's not in there).

In fact, it's probably worth mentioning that all the art for this promo was pulled from other sources. The central image of Flash comes from an Andy Kubert drawn house ad at the end of 2010's The Flash Volume 3 #1 (as you can see at Flash fansite speedforce.org). The background behind the Flash (a callback to the sublime wraparound slipcase cover for the Crisis on Infinite Earths hardcover by George Perez and Alex Ross) was taken from Flashpoint #5 (also drawn by Kubert).

The crackle section with Booster and Professor Zoom are the covers of Booster Gold #45 by Dan Jurgens, Norm Rapmund, and Hi-Fi Designs and Flashpoint: Reverse Flash #1 by Ardian Syaf and Vicente Cifuentes.

I don't find print copies of this thing documented online in any of the usual places, but it's possible it has been overlooked given its slight content. Does anyone know if Flashpoint Companion was ever officially published (i.e., committed to paper)? Perhaps as an in-store giveaway?

As a general rule, I confine mention of digital-only content to here on the Boosterrific Blog and leave it out of the larger tracking Boosterrific Database, in large part because digital content is so ephemeral, even by comic book standards. Should I make an exception here given the ubiquity of the free copies floating around online ten years after its original release? Oh, the headaches of being an obsessive comic book chronicler!

Hearty thanks to J for your ongoing efforts to make Boosterrific better than ever.

UPDATE: J adds via email

A few years ago, DC had booklets advertising various characters, such as Batman 101 and JSA 101, where they'd print a list of essential stories, a some two-page origin stories, and comic covers.... In the "Justice League 201" booklet, they'd reprinted the Origin of Booster Gold from 52 #24. But unfortunately, it seems to no longer be available.

Like the Flashpoint Companion, I believe those also only existed digitally, and my bias against tracking digital media applies. For years, DC made those 2-page origins available for free on their website as part of their character guides; that content seems to have evaporated as well.

And that's why I prefer physical floppies: DC can't take the paper away from me (unless they back a moving truck up to my house).

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Luckily for Booster boosters everywhere, Cort Carpenter hasn't let a rough patch of "health issues" keep him from adding new pages to his collection of Booster Gold sketch commissions.

Daniel Irizarri

Michael Fiffe

Ramona Fradon

I usually like to put these in alphabetical order, but this time I saved Ramona Fradon for last... because she's Ramona Fradon! A ninety-six-year-old DC legend and still drawing. Wow!

I hope all of your troubles are behind you, Cort. As always, thanks for sharing.

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