Today marks the negative 419th birthday of Jon Michael "Booster" Carter, born this day in the year 2442.

For most of the past decade, I've been accompanying my annual Booster Gold birthday wishes with the same pic of a Booster Gold cake based on the opening splash page from Booster Gold volume 1, #3.

That image first appeared on the the Internet sometime about 2008 and, according to The Oklahoman, is the work of Annette Price, co-owner (then and now) of Speeding Bullet Comics in Norman, OK.

As you might expect, the Internet has come a long way since 2008. Back in the day, photos had to be small to fit easily through all the tubes. One terabyte hard drives were only just becoming commercially available in 2008. But tubes and storage space are much, much bigger now — The Cloud! — so we can use bigger pictures on our giant monitors. Isn't living in the future great?

All of which means that it is finally time to retire my tiny cake picture and replace it with...

...

...

... a large cake picture!

Yes, that's the same photo, now embiggened through the use of modern "artificial intelligence" algorithms and ready for re-use for many more birthdays to come.

Congratulations, Booster!

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Today marks the negative 420th birthday of Jon Michael "Booster" Carter, born this day in the year 2442.

Booster Gold cake by Annette Price

Congratulations, Booster!

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Today marks the negative 421st birthday of Jon Michael "Booster" Carter, born this day in the year 2442.

Booster Gold cake by Annette Price

Congratulations, Booster! You can celebrate by picking up a copy of Human Target #3 (in which Booster Gold opens a bagel shop) and DC Vs. Vampires #3 (in which Booster Gold makes a cameo appearance on the set of the Super Friends cartoon) at your Local Comic Shop.

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Today Judd Winick is 50 years old, and he has spent many of those years creating comic books. (Technically, he's spent most of the past decade creating best-selling Hilo graphic novels for middle schoolers, but c'mon. We all know graphic novels are just longform comic books.)

Though Winnick has rarely worked on stories involving Booster Gold, there is one notable exception:

Justice League: Generation Lost is the story of former Justice League International members efforts to bring their former mentor, Maxwell Lord, to justice for his subsequent crimes against humanity.

The series began in 2010 and for the most part took into account nearly two decades worth of shared-universe heroic adventures. To Winick's credit, if you'd never read a single issue of Giffen and DeMatteis's Justice League International or Johns' Countdown to Infinite Crisis and Blackest Night, I'm sure you can still enjoy Justice League: Generation Lost. It's as much a traditional superheroic action/adventure story as it is a revenge story.

And for Booster Gold, it was very, very personal.

art by Keith Giffen, Aaron Lopresti, Matt Ryan, Hi-Fi, Sal Cipriano

In fact, Booster's key role in this story is a huge part of why I included the series in my 2020 list of the 12 Best Booster Gold stories ever.

Unfortunately, the story's impact was promptly devalued as the established DCU was discarded for the New 52. That means there are a decade's worth of new DC readers who are unlikely to be familiar with this great tale, which is a real shame.

As a birthday present to Mr. Winick, how about re-reading this great series. Better still, recommend it to someone you think would like it. It'll be like Winick gave *them* a present for *his* birthday.

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Today marks the negative 422nd birthday of Jon Michael "Booster" Carter, born this day in the year 2442.

Booster Gold cake by Annette Price

Congratulations, Booster! You can celebrate by picking up a copy of Dark Nights: Death Metal: The Last 52: War of the Multiverses #1 at your Local Comic Shop. The issue has two covers, and Booster is on both!

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