It has become an annual tradition for the President of the United States to "pardon" a turkey for Thanksgiving. Technically, a pardon is a legal forgiveness for having committing a crime, so the word really shouldn't apply to turkeys. We should say that they were granted clemency because they didn't do anything illegal prior to the imposition of their death sentence.

But what if they did?

Although Abraham Lincoln often gets the credit, the truth is that in November 1963, John Kennedy was the first president to pardon an unnamed turkey. "The turkey will probably live a long and happy life as a result of his presidential pardon," reported the Associated Press. Only, as we now know, it didn't.

As it turns out, The Turkey With No Name would soon be given a name: Patient Zero. After the turkey returned to its home in California, it was discovered the turkey was a carrier of the virus then known as "fowl plague." Today we recognize it as influenza A, more commonly called bird flu.

Bird flu is highly contagious and has been responsible for crossing species and killing millions of human beings around the world. In 1963, there was no treatment for the disease, and the only way to prevent the spread was to take swift and decisive action and cull entire flocks of birds... and anyone else who had contact with the infected fowl, including the popular President of the United States. (To prevent public panic over a potential pandemic, such extreme actions were undertaken surreptitiously with suspicion cast on convenient scapegoats.)

Any well-intentioned time travelers aware of this terrible and sordid chain of events might be tempted to take it upon themselves to "improve" history by going back in time and killing the turkey before it could trigger such a tragic spiral. However, as we all know, changing history can have dire unintended consequences. Ensuring that history plays out the way it must is the lonely but necessary job of a Time Cop, preferably one with a force field impenetrable to disease.

Thanks for performing your thankless job, Booster Gold!

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I can't think of a good intro here. I suspect that you're either old enough to remember the Mayfair Games DC Heroes Role-Playing Game from the late '80s or you're not. If you're not, you probably don't care about this, but if you are, Cryptozoic Games, publisher of the DC Deck-Building Game, has launched a Kickstarter Campaign to reprint the DC Heroes Role-Playing Game. All of it.

Even the Booster Gold module All that Glitters that has the Booster Gold Board Game on the back.

Especially that.

For a better idea of how much Booster Gold might be in there, and it's an appropriate amount corresponding to Booster's place in the DCU in 1985-89, I suggest you follow this link to Boosterrific Blog posts going back to the Mayfestivus comic-book blogger crossover of 2010.

(Grumpy Old Man Digression: Remember when the Internet used to be fun? I even hosted a shockwave format single-player version of the All that Glitters Booster Gold Board Game here at Boosterrific.com back before Apple killed Flash Player. Ah, those were the days.)

It sure looks like it'll cost well upwards of $400 to get reprints of all the Booster Gold-related materials. Yeah, that's expensive, but DC isn't giving Booster Gold fans much else to buy these days, and I've got to spend that money on something, right?

Anyway, this is definitely something to be thankful for this year!

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Remember that time Superman killed Booster Gold?

Ask yourself: is Superman mad that he murdered Booster or that Booster called him a m-monsterrr?

Sheesh, 1991 was a rough year for Superman. First Armageddon 2001 suggests he's going to be a murdering tyrant in the future, then Adventures of Superman #479 makes him a murdering tyrant in the present.

Don't worry too much about Booster's death there. He doesn't really die. Or, more accurately, that's not really Booster Gold. It's not even really Superman. Red Kryptonite does some strange things to Kryptonians.

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