McFarlane Toys announced a new selection of 7" DC Multiverse figures this week, and their selection includes a familiar face, albeit one in an unfamiliar costume.

That's Waverider, but probably not the one most DC Comics readers remember. By which I mean that is not Matthew Ryder, the protagonist of the 1991 Armageddon 2001 event.

As devout Booster boosters can tell from the costume, that's actually Michael Jon "Booster Gold" Carter. Or one of them, anyway.

Here, I'll let the mcfarlane.com promotional text explain:

During the Convergence event, an aged Booster Gold (Michael Jon Carter) from an alternate Earth became the new Waverider when he was fed into the timestream by Earth-0's Booster Gold. This Waverider took on a career in the Multiverse, initially helping Telos and various Super Heroes convince Brainiac to realign the Multiverse. Waverider's ability to surf the timestream enables him to discover secrets hidden in the past and also gain knowledge of future events.

This is kind of a deep cut, even for McFarlane Toys. Booster-rider has only ever appeared in 2 comics: Convergence Booster Gold #2 and Convergence #8 both released on the same day in 2015. And the costume on that figure appears in only the first of those two comics!

I'm no fan of the ridiculously overworked "New 52" era design of Waverider II with its unnecessary armored leggings gold-plated abs, traffic-sign shoulder arrows, and call-back to NuBooster's hideously medieval gauntlets, but it looks positively svelte compared to the bulky McFarlane figure, which I can only assume is re-purposing re-colored pieces from previous steroid-abusing figures into an approximation of the comic book Waverider II costume. The economics of toy production is a bitch!

But if you (rightly) believe that any Booster Gold figure is a good figure, you can already pre-order your own for $19.99 at Target.com.

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Once upon a time, Guy Gardner was an insufferable jerk who was so insufferable that he was actually kicked out of the Green Lantern Corps. Guy being Guy, that didn't stop him for long. In fact, he took on the entire Corps just to get his hand on Sinestro's yellow power ring, which, being Sinestro's ring, had a few quirks of its own, as Guy discovered in Guy Gardner #2, released on this date 29 years ago today.

But that's not what's important about that issue. What's important about that issue was Booster Gold's 1990s hair!

I'd sell my soul to Neron for hair like that.

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Two pieces of news today that are probably each worthy of their own post. But since they both came from the ghost of Newsarama at GamesRadar.com, I'm combining them into this one post.

Thing 1: "Booster Gold: Inside the social media superhero who was 35 years ahead of his time" by Vaneta Rogers is a retrospective of what Booster Gold has meant to the writers who have crafted his adventures.

Rogers' oral history includes interviews with Dan Jurgens, Keith Giffen, J.M. Dematteis, and Jeff Katz, all ow whom clearly have a great deal of respect for the character they helped craft.

In fact, Giffen said that, when he and co-writer J.M. DeMatteis were told by editor Andy Helfer they had to use Booster Gold in their new Justice League run in 1987, it was this 'things-never-go-right' element that defined Booster.

"I'll be honest: I had no idea what to do with the character when we first had him," Giffen said. "Booster really didn't gel in my mind until he had the first 'bwa-ha-ha' moment and Beetle was laughing at him. I knew then that this character is going to know life's frustrations and is going to get knocked down a lot, but is always going to get back up again."

That's just a taste of the insight the piece provides into what has made Booster Gold so durable for the past three-plus decades. Good work, Vaneta.

Thing 2: "New DC Human Target is a 12-issue 'whodunit'" by Micheal Doran is essentially a sales piece to encourage fans to buy the upcoming Human Target series featuring the Justice League International.

The report lays out the basic premise of the series and quotes writer Tom King telling us how this is going to be just like every other prestige mini-series he's written for DC in the past half decade. But the important part for Booster boosters is the news about the variant covers.

The [Trevor] Hairsine and [Danny] Miki #1 and #2 variants connect to form the cover of a 'Whodunit' board game. The back cover features a pin-up calendar, "leaning into the mid-century feel of the comic," says DC.

When placed side by side, those variant covers will look like this:

Mid-century? No. Boosterrific? Very.

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Booster Gold rides in with the cavalry in this week's Justice League #66!

It's a cameo appearance, sure, but the book ends on a cliffhanger that promises more action to come. Maybe Booster will have a bigger part in the next issue? (If he's lucky, he may even get a whole line of dialog!)

And while we're on the subject of brief appearances, perhaps you'll recall that last week Booster's Gold's hair made a cameo in Teen Titans Academy #5? DC must have liked that, because this week they put Booster's hair in all of their books:

Director Bones enjoys running his fingers through Booster's hair.

This is the fourth weekly variant "Multiversal Monitors" house ad promoting the "Infinite Frontier" era. Each consecutive edition has retained and shuffled some images from the week before. In this case, Booster Gold and Blue Beetle are still on screen, relocated behind Director Bones where only Booster's hair is visible.

Booster should move quickly to capitalize on all the exposure his scalp is getting. If Dirk Davis was still his manager, I'm sure he'd be in television commercials for Mane 'n Tail by now.

Buy a comic book and make Skeets happy.

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Boosterrific Note: the following was sent to me in response to my April 10 post asking for Booster Gold fans to write in and tell us a bit about themselves.

Everyone, say hello to Fin.

Hello!

I'm a bit of a Booster newbie, seeing as I've only been a fan for about a year and a half now. (To be fair, I've only been into comics for about... wow, has it been three years? It feels both longer and shorter than that!) I've had this website open in my tabs for about half that time, and love that this place exists for us to get the latest Booster-news, see art, and have fun and interesting commentary on his appearances (even if we don't agree sometimes; example one — sorry, but his second hairstyle was grossly militaristic and way too Sergeant Rock-looking, bring back the over-idealistic curl! XD). When you posted asking for fans to write in, I though, "nahhh, I'm not interesting enough," but then I thought about how Booster would use it as a marketing opportunity and decided "what the heck!"

I actually can't figure out what my first introduction to his character was. When I got into comics, I kind of splurged into a lot of different things at once, and then my old Lieutenant (that's a different story) gave me a huge box of his old comics around that time, too. I could've first seen him in Justice League Action; it could've been in the Death of Superman issues (I know I have the JLA one after the Doomsday fight); it could have also been in the more memorable AIDS PSAs of that time period, but I distinctly remember being somewhat appalled by his character in those (in my defense, I didn't know him!); but it was most likely through the Blackest Night event.

As was the case with Booster, I'm not sure when I found this website, and probably found it a few times before I really FOUND it. It was, in all likelihood, when I was looking up a specific picture and clicked the link, purely because the bit of text from the website that Google images offers intrigued me. I really love it; you are ridiculously dedicated to the point where it's inspiring, you offer fresh, informed, and actually interesting reviews, and above all you're a pretty nice guy! (See: the aforementioned disagreement I have with you, and how you were respectful and kind when someone else disagreed in the comments. It's very refreshing when most people will just get angry whenever you disagree.) Your catalogue of appearances is very helpful to the new fan like me, and even more than that I appreciate the fan works that you spotlight, and finding him in fansongs and the like that you have listed is always a treat.

Now, since I started this with the tease of a self-marketing campaign, let's do another horrible segue into that! I'm a kid (well, technically adult, but actually a child) trying to eventually get into a minor editorial position at DC (with the lofty goal of one day establishing that long-ago, way back in the eighties talked-about Blue and Gold series), but I need some exposure before I get that far. As such, I'm currently working for a small independent press (traditional books, not comics) called Apprentice House. We can always use more manuscripts, and we've got a new batch of books I've worked on through acquisitions, editorial, marketing, and a bit of design! Check us out; we've also got more coming out in October! Beyond that, I'm currently writing a short comic that will be up on Webtoons in the coming months. It's for a short story contest, so views and likes and such are greatly appreciated (30% of the judging criteria, too, dern!). The title is "The Tree of Life is Rotting"; the plot is the same. Check it out, hopefully you'll find it interesting and a good read!

Thanks for your time in reading this long rant; I'm ending it now for everyone's sake! I hope you're staying safe, sane, and happy during this chaotic mess of a time, and I wish you a good day. Cheers!

Thank you, Fin. I'm sure you've already realized I only posted this because you said I was a nice guy and not because you're so wrong about hairstyles.

If anyone else would like to share and/or self-promote, please drop me a line through the Boosterrific.com Contact Portal or directly at walter(at)boosterrific.com.

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