I've mentioned Fire & Ice: Welcome to Smallville a few times here on the Boosterrific Blog, but apparently that's not enough. Fortunately for all other Booster boosters, Jake has taken me to task.

I have begrudgingly been keeping up with the Fire and Ice series DC is putting out, and while the comic itself isn't really all that for me, it's just nice to see the girls again, given that they are two near & dear favorites (a sentiment I'm sure many Booster boosters resonate with). So it has been particularly nice to come across mentions of Booster two issues in a row. Issue #3 (which overall did not meet the Gold Standard, but you can't ask for much these days) repeatedly brought up Kooey Kooey Kooey, and then directly mentioned those "dummies" by name, Booster and Beetle, as well as their "harebrained schemes".

Fire & Ice: Welcome to Smallville #3, by Joanne Starer, Natacha Bustos, Tamra Bonvillain, Ariana Maher, Andrea Shea

Issue #4 features a Booster Gold drag queen. Take that as you will.

Fire & Ice: Welcome to Smallville #3, by Joanne Starer, Natacha Bustos, Tamra Bonvillain, Ariana Maher, Andrea Shea

Thanks, Jake. I am also reading this series, and I also recognize that I'm not the target audience, although I'm not entirely sure who is. I didn't realize there was a market for LGBTQ+ friendly romance comics with extra cannibalism.

Target audience or not, I can't be too mad at a series that firmly restores Tora's Norse ice goddess roots (and features a bunch of the DCU's wacky lesser-seen characters). In other words, I'll take what I can get of my favorite womance.

It's only a six-issue mini-series, so I'm sure I'll keep reading... at least until we learn the Booster Gold drag queen's stage name. Goldie Nuff? Queen G? Trixie Collins? The suspense is killing me.

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Not so long ago, Rob Snow wrote in to let us know that the book, Strange and Unsung All-Stars of the DC Universe by Stephanie Williams "has a whole section for Skeets."

I still haven't managed to get my hands on a copy to confirm this, but I trust Rob.

What's strangest about this is how it seems that Skeets wouldn't seem to qualify. I mean, good for Skeets; even Booster rarely gives him the credit he deserves. But the little fella seems an odd choice for a book of "all-stars" given that he has had, like, zero solo adventures in four decades.

Other than that time he was possessed by a villain (and the occasional hint that he and Rip Hunter hang out off panel), Skeets has only been depicted having adventures apart from Booster Gold in the Extreme-era JLA when he and Oberon befriended Firestorm.

If Skeets is finally ready to spread his winglets and fly out of Booster's shadow to become a standalone hero in his own right, I'm all for it. Every hero's gotta start somewhere: maybe he should consider giving the Titans a call.

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If you didn't buy any DC Comics this week, you might not have seen Kevin Maguire's tribute to the late Keith Giffen surrounded by his creations (in the style of the immortal Justice League #1 cover) that appeared in each of DC's monthly titles.

As you can see, the famously irascible Giffen is in the center position originally occupied by the famously irascible Guy Gardner. Very fitting.

Also fitting, Giffen wearing a t-shirt with Booster and Beetle laughing. That image isn't new; it comes from a print that Maguire created for DC in 2014. Giffen didn't create either character, but he and his writing partner J.M. DeMatteis did create "Bwa-ha-ha" and build Blue and Gold into comicdom's greatest bromance.

The second page of the two-page tribute is quotes of Giffen's friends and co-creators. You can read them online at dc.com/rememberingkeithgiffen.

Thanks for the laughs, Keith.

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A few weeks back, I posted what comics fan magazine Amazing Heroes had to say about the undeveloped Justice League International television project of 1990. You may recall that the reviewer was not impressed.

However, over the weekend, I was reading a different old comics fan magazine, Comics Scene, and found a second opinion.

In Comics Scene Volume 2, #46, 1994, I came across Frank Garcia's interview with one of the creators of that project, screenwriter Jeff Freilich. In this article, Freilich brags, "The guys who do the JLA title asked us to write issues because they thought we wrote the characters so accurately." Sure, I suppose that could have happened.

Freilich also had thoughts about who should play the heroes:

Playing casting director for a moment, [Jeff] Freilich considers who they might have signed aboard the Justice League.

"Very often the case in television, when fantasizing casting, we would way, ‘We want a young Bruce Willis' and then go out and look for those people," says Freilich. Not prone to stunt casting, Freilich prefers unknowns for many of the heroes. However, if JLA were to be treated as a feature, the game becomes more fun.

"With a cast that large, you can't really afford to use feature film actors," says Freilich. "It's not a question of expense, by the way, it's a question of commitment. If a person is a movie star, they generally don't want to commit to a TV series. They wouldn't be able to work on movies."

When it's suggested that Sam (Jurassic Park) Neill would be a good Maxwell Lord, Freilich lights up and responds positively. "Sam Neill would be a very good Max. When we wrote Justice League, Neill was an unknown. He has done so many things in the last few years. He would be a superb Max Lord."

For Mr. Miracle's boisterous, loudmouthed manager, Oberon, Billy (Willow) Barty (STARLOG #130) snatches the role. "A young version of Billy Barty [would be better]," said Freilich. "He's a bit old. There are quite a few excellent small actors. It's just unfortunate there are very rarely parts for them. Billy Barty is the person you have in mind immediately."

Offering a surprising suggestion for Mr. Miracle, Frielich thinks real-life escape artist David Copperfield would do the job well.

"When they picked Bill Bixby for The Magician, he was already an amateur magician," the writer explains. "When they cast Burt Lancaster as a trapeze artist [in the 1956 film Trapeze], he was an acrobat and an aerial artist before becoming an actor. It always makes sense with someone and using the stunt double throughout. [Performing magic] is difficult to teach people. You have to have a talent for that kind of stuff."

For the two witty male leads, Blue Beetle and Booster Gold, Freilich envisions a young Woody Allen for Beetle and a young Bruce Willis type for Booster. He says Mark Hamill might do Booster's role well, due to its similarity to his portrayal of the Trickster in The Flash. "But I don't know if we would have gone with Hamill or someone new," Freilich muses.

Bruce Willis? Yippee-ki-yay, Booster boosters.

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While my attention was focused on turkey and apple pie last week, DC sneaked a Booster Gold by me!

As you can see, the Earth-22 version of our hero (and Skeets!) makes a very brief appearance in Batman Superman World's Finest #21, now on sale at Local Comic Shops everywhere:

The events of this issue take place prior to the events of Kingdom Come, so this is chronologically Earth-22 Booster's first appearance!

It seems likely that we'll see Booster again in the next issue, currently scheduled for a December 19 release. You can be sure I'll be paying attention to that.

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