Back in August, when DC announced November 2023 solicitations, I wrote

In worse news, the November 2023 DC solicitations are out at GamesRadar.com, and the only sign of our hero is a poke at the Blue and Gold team in the tease for Fire & Ice: welcome to Smallville #4 (shipping in December).

Well, that was true then. But sometimes things change for the better. If BleedingCool.com can be believed, key information was left out of those solicitations.

DC's Twas The Mite Before Christmas, a seasonal Bat-Mite anthology, was solicited as being by Natalie Abrams, Michael W. Conrad, Josh Trujillo, Ethan Sacks, Zipporah Smith, Rob Levin, Sholly Fisch, and Jillian Grant with [art] by Marcus Smith, Gavin Guidry, Andrew Drilon, Soo Lee, Juan Bobillo and more. But who is doing what? And was anyone dropped? No, but a few were added. Here is the full creative team as it hits FOC this weekend.

• The Teen Titans in "At Home Alone in Titans Tower" by Zipporah Smith and Logan Faerber
• Harley Quinn & Amethyst in "The Princess Switch" by Rob Levin and Bob Quinn
• Lex Luthor in "Lex-Tacular Christmas Carol" by Ethan Sacks and Soo Lee
• Batwoman in "Riddler on the Roof" by Natalie Abrams and Marcus "Mas" Smith
• Booster Gold in "The Santa Copies" by Jillian Grant and Rebekah Isaacs
• Superman in "Streaks in the Sky" by Michael W. Conrad and Gavin Guidry
• Bunker in "It's a Bunkerful Life" by Josh Trujillo and Andrew Drilon
• Bat-Mite in "Wonderful Toys" by Sholly Fisch and Juan Bobillo

Bleeding Cool has a history of teasing Booster Gold appearances that never manifest, but the solicitation text did explicitly reference "eight classic holiday stories!", so that math checks out. The cover image on LunarDistribution.com also shows Harley Quinn, Lex Luthor, Batwoman, Superman, Bunker, and Bat-Mite, so that looks promising, too.

However, both the solicitation and the cover include John Constantine, who you'll notice is conspicuously absent from the above list. Ruining my holiday fun sounds just like the sort of thing Constantine would do!

Now you've been forewarned. Don't let this one pass you by when it arrives in fine Local Comic Shoppes everywhere on December 12.

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Unless you're planning on picking up the new DCeased boxed set collection (of previously released trades), don't expect to see Booster Gold in any DC Comics this week. At least not in your Local Comic Shop.

However, Booster does appear on the cover of a recent issue of Ross Pearsall's Super-Team Family Presents... at braveandboldlost.blogspot.com:

There's a lot to like about this potential crossover. In addition to the fact that both Booster Gold and Phillip J. Fry are temporally-displaced persons with robot sidekicks, Futurama has never shied away from criticizing the sort of runaway commercialism that Booster Gold often represents.

And, of course, that pic of Booster comes from 2008's Legion of Super-Heroes in the 31st-Century #19, and Futurama is set in... you guessed it... the 31st century.

Yeah, I'd definitely buy that comic. I might even be willing to pay quite a bit more than 60¢.

UPDATE 2023-10-17: Booster booster Marty writes in to let us know that a picture of Booster does appear in Batman Superman World's Finest #20. So buy that and make Skeets happy!

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Childhood is a time of learning about the world around you and preparing you for the future. But what if your childhood won't happen for another few centuries and your future is in the past? That's the case for time-traveling hero Booster Gold, whose 25th-century upbringing may not have prepared him for 21st-century life.

HEALTHCARE: In the 2460s, Michael "Booster" Carter's mother will be diagnosed with a fatal degenerative disease that can only be treated in a specialized zero gravity facility on the moon. Certainly, such an operation is beyond the reach of 21st-century science, but it will present Booster with a problem all too familiar to present-day Americans: where to get the money to pay for it?

Secret Origins #35

It's more than a little disappointing that life-saving healthcare will remain beyond the reach of too many even 400 years from now. Booster's solution will change his life not for the better, however, the lesson he will learn and a sympathetic understanding of the problems facing citizens in all eras will be an asset for the hero he will eventually become.

TRANSPORTATION: For about as long as there have been automobiles, prognisticators have been predicting that they will one-day fly. And they're right. By the 25th century, even school busses will take to the air.

Booster Gold #15

When Booster Gold debuted in Metropolis, he had super strength and an invulnerable force field. Yet ordinary 16-year-olds had a power he didn't: the ability to drive an eathbound car. No wonder his first 20th-century vehicle was a chauffeured limousine!

HOLIDAYS: If, like Charlie Brown, you think that Christmas has gone too commercial in the 21st century, you probably don't want to see how they celebrate the holiday in the year 2462.

Booster Gold #15

Each December, Booster Gold must feel right at home no matter what century he's in.

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Childhood is a time of learning about the world around you and preparing you for the future. But what if your childhood won't happen for another few centuries and your future is in the past? That's the case for time-traveling hero Booster Gold, whose 25th-century upbringing may not have prepared him for 21st-century life.

SPORTS: The most popular sport in the mid 2400s will be familiar to 21st-century inhabitants. Aside from some minor technological innovations like sensors on the goal line to detect touchdowns, the sport will look and play in ways pretty much exactly as it had 400 years earlier. Someone watching a game in 1982 would have little trouble following the action in 2442.

Even the economics of the sport will be little changed. Just as in the 21st century, 25th-century college athletes will be considered "amateurs" who earn their institutions and commercial partners — and bookmakers — considerable revenue while making no income themselves.

Booster Gold #18

Though at the time, star quarterback Michael "Booster" Carter wouldn't have cared about such things, mastering the game of football would be a great indoctrination in 21st-century culture.

DIET: Soy dogs might have seemed far-fetched to citizens of 1987, but meat substitutes are all the rage in the 2020s as they will be in the Gotham City of the 25th century. We can only imagine what will make the population of the future turn their back on meat. Is it a commercial necessity following the Great Disaster? Is it an ethical consideration for animal welfare? Or do soy dogs just plain taste better than 20th-century hot dogs?

Whatever the case, by the 25th century, science will have advanced enough that people can have a different relationship with food than 21st-century diners. In Booster Gold's native time, gourmands will be able to eat whatever they like without fear of unhealthy weight gain.

Justice League Quarterly #6

That system sure beats rice cakes.

ROBOTS: In the 21st century, artificial intelligence really isn't very intelligent. Speech recognition software can decipher what television channel you want to watch and scanning algorithms can unlock your phone, but Siri isn't thinking or feeling in the traditional sense. That will have changed drastically by the year 2462.

Booster Gold will be raised in a world in which self-sufficient robots can be counted on to reliably perform many complicated jobs, including valet and security guard. There's plenty of evidence between the panels of Booster's adventures to suggest the only thing keeping robots from becoming further integrated into society is resistance from biological lifeforms.

Booster Gold #16

Thinking robots may not exist in the 21st century, but bigotry is eternal.

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UPDATE 2021-04-21: This post was originally sent live on April 21, 2021, but I have backdated it to clear the deck for some more important news!

The Flash 769 arrives in your Local Comic Shop this week. As you can see from the cover, Gold Beetle features prominently.

Says Barry Allen: "She looks like...well...like both of...you know." And that's as close as this issue gets to name-dropping Booster Gold.

The Gold Beetle in this issue is a fast talking, brash time traveler with a painfully strong Dr. Who vibe. The accoutrements and mannerisms aren't a perfect match to GB's first appearance (in Future State Suicide Squad, also written by Jeremy Adams), but as with the encounters with The Doctor, there's no guarantee we're meeting her in chronological order. Time Travel Is Complicated.â„¢

Which brings us to today's big question: should Boosterrific.com be tracking Gold Beetle appearances? When I put the site together 14 years ago, it honestly didn't occur to me that I might need to be tracking Booster Gold legacy characters. It didn't occur to me until earlier this year, in fact.

I do track Booster's sidekicks. I've logged independent Skeets appearances (though that's only happened a few times in JLA trophy rooms), but Goldstar had never yet appeared in a book without Booster. Should I be logging Gold Beetle appearances somewhere? Given that this is only GB's third appearance, maybe I can put that decision off until later.

Meanwhile, if you absolutely have to have a new comic with Booster Gold in it, there's always the Who's Who Omnibus Volume 1, a 1320-page hardcover reprint of most of DC's late 80's Who's Who encyclopedias, including Booster's entry in the Who's Who Update '87. It costs $150, but such is the price of nostalgia on glossy archival paper.

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