Not so long ago, I was asked where a new reader interested in learning more about Michael "Booster" Carter's twin sister, Michelle, should start. That's a pretty reasonable request, if an especially rare one.

Michelle doesn't have many fans who haven't already read a bunch of Booster Gold comics, mostly because Michelle really hasn't appeared in all that many comics.^† She's never appeared in a book without Booster in it.

In fact, she doesn't even appear in her first appearance! That's because we first see her portrait in a holographic globe alongside the twins' mother in Booster Gold Volume 1 #5.

Michelle's early life in the 25th-century is seen via brief glimpses during Booster Gold origin-story flashbacks in (ordered chronologically relative to Michelle's life) Booster Gold Volume 2 #0, Secret Origins #35, Justice League Quarterly #10, and Booster Gold Volume 1 #6.

We don't get to meet Michelle in person until Booster Gold Volume 1 #15, when like a God in the Machine, she descends from the heavens to save her brother's life (plus the lives of Rip Hunter, Jack Soo, and original Goldstar Trixie Collins) and return with them to the 20th-century. Not bad, so far as grand first entrances go.

Now living in the "present" day, Michelle takes over the Goldstar costume from Trixie and appears in most following issues of Volume 1 until the unfortunate events of Booster Gold #22 where — spoiler alert — she dies.

But being the twin sister of a Time Master means that there's always time for more adventures. Michelle is granted a reprieve in Booster Gold Volume 2 #1,000,000.

Thereafter she played a recurring spring role in many issues of Booster Gold Volume 2, Time Masters: Vanishing Point, and Convergence.

We haven't seen her since Rebirth-Death Metal-Infinite Frontier-Dark Crisis fully restored the DC Multiverse, but we can be sure that she's still out there helping her brother make the world(s) a better place.

For more information about Michelle, read my "Character Spotlight on Michelle Carter."

^† Michelle has appeared in a total of 42 comics since her debut in 1986. Most were written by her creator, Dan Jurgens. The rest were by Mark Waid, Geoff Johns & Jeff Katz, Chuck Dixon, Rick Remender, J.M. DeMatteis & Keith Giffen, and Jeff King & Scott Lobdell.

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Booster booster Marty directed me to this image on The App That Used To Be Twitter:

The whatever-it-is that-we're-calling-tweets-now implies that cocktail menu comes from "the #BlueBeetle after party", whatever that was. As you can (barely) see at the bottom of the list, there's a drink there named for Ted Kord's best buddy, Booster Gold.

The ingredients read "Mezcal, Ancho Piña Shrub, Grapefruit, Lime, Close Honey, Angostura." Full disclosure here: I'm an absolute teetotaler. I haven't had an alcoholic beverage since the Olympic Games were held in Atlanta, Georgia. (It was a Tom Collins.) So my working knowledge of cocktails is a little rusty, and I have no idea what that tastes like, much less what some of those ingredients even are.

But my Google skills are strong. Allowing for typos — "close" should be "clove" — and a brand-sponsored tequila substitution, it seems those ingredients combine to make what Difford's Guide calls a Mercado Roma and The Educated Barfly calls an Oaxacanite. Here's a picture of a good-looking presentation of those drinks on Instagram:

It's certainly the right color.

As for whether this hints at any role Booster might play in the movie... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ . I guess we'll find out when the film hits theaters on August 18.

Thanks for the drink, Marty.

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And so at last we reach the end of Booster Gold Volume 1. It is, without a doubt, the ugliest of all 25 original issues.

Robert Campanella's inks are not a good fit for Dan Jurgens' pencils, and even most of Jurgens' layouts are subpar. Either this issue was rushed through editorial to fit the aggressive Millennium publishing schedule, or all the visual artists involved were in a hurry to move on to greener pastures. Maybe both.

(In my opinion, this issue is the only one in volume one that I think looks definitively superior in the often careless recolored digital reprints over the original newsprint publication.)

It's really a shame about the art, because the Dan Jurgens' script deserves better. It hits all the right notes as it forces Booster to face the down-side of publicity (in an American fast food restaurant) with a Communist providing outside perspective.

It also cleverly draws in the Justice League characters Booster is closest to while setting our hero up for a triumphant come-back in the future. Both of those latter elements factor into my favorite page of Booster Gold #25 (especially Beetle's lecture in panel 2):

Yeah! What Beetle said!

That's what I like so much about Booster Gold. His path meanders, but he always gets to the right place in the end.

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I woke up yesterday to a breathless email from Marty that read

Booster!! He's in a comic!!! Multiversity: Harley Screws Up the DCU #6 (the solicitations have been kind of all over the place on this miniseries, so it might be advertised as #5 being the issue released today?) features three whole glorious panels of our boy.

So I gulped down my coffee and rushed out to my Local Comic Shop and plopped down $5 for this week's new release physical copy of Multiversity: Harley Screws Up the DCU #5. I then sat in my car flipping through the pages for signs of Booster... and nothing.

Booster Gold is NOT in Multiversity: Harley Screws Up the DCU #5. Nowhere. Not. One. Panel.

"Marty," I frantically typed into my email machine, "why would you do this to me?"

And Marty replied

That's strange. Issue #6 is available to read today digitally on the DCU Infinite app, I wonder why the physical release is behind? Either way, sorry to have pointed you to the wrong issue - Booster isn't in #5 at all.

Oh, the humanity!

But at least we have all been forewarned about an inevitability. Booster Gold will absolutely, positively be in Multiversity: Harley Screws Up the DCU #6, currently scheduled to arrive at your Local Comic Shop on August 8. (And, apparently available on the DC Infinite app right now, if, you know, you're a huge fan suffering from Booster Gold withdrawal and you just can't wait that long....)

Thanks, Marty!

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Ok, so over the weekend, while trying to fix one malingering back-end code problem here at Boosterrific.com (stupid, stupid spam filters), I discovered that another of my recent-ish changes had resulted in a bunch of bad internal links. Specifically, following links on a character's list of shared Booster Gold appearances could take you to the bio of an entirely different character. Oops.

Now, I think I've got both problems are fixed. Going forward, if you do click an internal link here on Boosterrific.com and it doesn't take you where you think it was supposed to take you — for example, if a link promising Harley Quinn takes you instead to *ahem* the Sea Devils — please do me a favor and drop me a note, either in a blog post comment or via the Boosterrific Contact form so that I can fix it. Thank you for your help in making Boosterrific better.

And just so you don't leave this post thinking that Boosterrific.com has nothing to offer today other than malfunctioning code and hijacked links, here's a seasonally appropriate piece of delightful Blue and Gold fan art by Melonnabar (from Tumblr via Reddit):

It tickles me that they wear bathing suits that give away their secret identities. Very subtle, boys.

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