This name drop is the closest that Booster Gold comes to making an appearance in this week's The Flash 2021 Annual:

words by Jeremy Adams, art by Fernando Pasarin, Brandon Peterson, Hi Fi, Michael Atiyeh, Steve Wands

For what it's worth, it's cool that Booster and Rip Hunter are still Time Masters in the DCU. Though how Green Arrow knows Booster is a time cop isn't clear. Do secret identities mean *nothing* in modern comic books? And if everyone knows that Booster Gold is a time cop, why hasn't anyone called him in to help while Wally West has been bouncing through time for the past few months? Maybe it's best if I don't climb down this rabbit hole....

Still, I have to admit that I had expected more in an issue revisiting the events detailed in Heroes in Crisis. Especially since a key element of that story was Wally framing Booster Gold for murder.

The DC Universe has been rebooted (twice!) since Heroes in Crisis. It would be so easy to say that the murders at Sanctuary didn't happen. I won't spoil any of the details of the issue, but The Flash 2021 Annual doesn't want to ignore all of that past, just the parts that are inconvenient. Inconvenient to Wally West, I mean.

Gunfire and Lagoon Boy might be alive again somewhere in the Multiverse. (Thanks, Infinite Frontier!) And Professor Zoom has taken credit as the true puppet master behind Wally West's criminal acts. (Thanks, Flash Forward!) Apparently now we need another excuse for why none of whatever happened was really Wally's fault in the first place. (Thanks, The Flash 2020 Annual!) Funny how one bad story can generate a cottage industry of retcons. (Thanks, Tom King!)

Anyway, Booster has forgiven Wally, and The Flash 2021 Annual wants us all to follow suit. So I'll try to forgive it its flaws. Any book that finally gets rid of Wally's over-detailed New 52 costume can't be all bad.

Is this the last appearance of the Gold Beetle? Only time will tell.

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Hey, DC, your website, dccomics.com/comics, is hard to use when I'm standing in my Local Comic Shop with my smart phone trying to figure out whether or not they should have received a particular new comic this week. Seems you might want to work on that.

For example, apparently you just released the trade collection Legion of Super-Heroes Volume 1: Millennium, reprinting Booster Gold's appearance in Legion of Super-Heroes: Millennium #2. That's great! It's a delightful Michael "Booster" Carter appearance written by Brian Michael Bendis and drawn by Nicola Scott.

SPOILER ALERT: He does.

Every Booster Gold fan would enjoy that!

Fortunately, I now have the opportunity to browse my Local Comic Shop on Tuesday and report on my latest misadventure the next day. That part of the new distribution scheme, that part I like.

So 2020 is not *all* bad.

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Booster booster Eskana dropped me this note last week:

I don't know if you've seen these yet, but the Comicstorian channel on YouTube has been posting videos that contain some major Booster Gold. The host, Benny, has been holding "Dungeons & Dragons"-style role-playing games for the DC universe, and in each one the two guests are playing as the characters of Booster Gold and Blue Beetle (Ted.) I've never played D&D, but the videos are pretty entertaining as the guests do a pretty good job of acting out their roles as Ted and Booster. The episodes seem to feature the two working with the new Blue Wally West to fix anomalies in time and the multiverse, so you see them acting out storylines such as DCeased.

I'm not a frequent consumer of YouTube videos, but I have played my share of D&D. More than my share, if the truth were known. (Full disclosure, an rpg campaign I ran in 2001 is the basis for a series of novels I wrote in 2016. *plug, plug*)

These guys at Comicstorian seem to know what they're doing, and, more importantly, they're obviously having a pretty good time role-playing as our favorite heroes. Given the current health crisis, a podcasting video might be as close as many of us will get to a real gaming session in the near future.

If you're interested in such things, you can find the video at YouTube.com.

Thanks for the link, Eskana.

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What makes a hero super? The super powers! From awesome strength to zero-to-sixty speed, great superpowers are the most useful tricks in every famous costumed crime-fighter's tool kit. Michael Jon Carter knew this, and that's why he started his career with a telepathically-controlled flight ring.

As a student of history, Michael "Booster" Carter modeled his superhero persona on Superman. In addition to strength, invulnerability, and long-range energy beams, he'd also need to be able to fly. To that end, he stole a Legion of Super-Heroes Flight Ring, created by Brainiac 5 in the pages of Adventure Comics #329 (1965).

In its original design, the ring was a simple metal band that provided a telepathically-controlled anti-gravity effect for those Legionnaires who could not fly under their own power. They soon became standard issue equipment for all Legionnaires. Even Superboy had one, though he rarely had need of it except in those few cases where he lost his powers, such as the time he visited Earth's past and found it lit by a red sun.

(If you squint at the panel above, you can see a flight ring there on Superboy's hand in this panel from Adventure Comics #133, also in 1965. This is the first time Superboy wore a Flight Ring.)

Brainiac 5 wasn't content with having a ring that only allowed flight. He eventually gave the ring other abilities, including sending emergency distress signals. He also improved its appeal by converting it to a gold signet-style ring showing a raised letter "L" in the center (first appearance in Adventure Comics #347). That's how the ring looked when it found its way into Booster Gold's arsenal in Booster Gold #1 (1985), and that's more or less how it looked when Booster Gold joined the Justice League in Justice League #4 (1987) and escaped from a Bialyan prison in Justice League International #17 (1988).

Booster's ring was originally depicted with a letter from the Roman alphabet. However, it sometimes was seen showing Interlac, the "inter-galactic universal language of the 30th century" which first appeared in Adventure Comics #379 (1969). By Booster Gold volume 2 #1 (2007), Booster's ring had changed to the stylized "L" on a black background that had been in use since Legion of Super-Heroes #41 (1993).

How could one ring alter its appearance so much? Well, the Legion of Super-Heroes have a tendency for getting involved in reality-warping time travel shenanigans. In fact, that's how a Legion of Super-Heroes ring from the 30th century ended up in the 25th-century Space Museum in the first place.

When Booster's debut in the 20th century drew the attention of the Legion of Super-Heroes, Brainiac 5 realized he had to leave his own flight ring in 1985 for Booster to be able to steal it in 2462 (as seen in Booster Gold #6). Therefore, the ring was available for Booster Gold to steal only because he had already stolen it. (It's best not to think too hard about that.)

If it sounds like Booster Gold creator Dan Jurgens was making things up as he went along, he was. His original plan, as revealed in Booster Gold: The Big Fall, was that instead of stealing Brainiac 5's ring from the Space Museum, Booster would have stolen Superboy's rarely used original ring from the Superman Museum!

That plan was scuttled by the events of Crisis on Infinite Earths, which erased Superboy's adventures from history. Thus the original origin of Booster Gold's flight ring became just one more casualty of the universe-destroying Anti-Monitor. What a jerk.

If you'd like to read about the origins of other powers in Booster Gold's arsenal, check out previous spotlight posts on his Force Field Belt and Booster Shots.

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Booster Gold fans will find two "must buy" books in their Local Comic Shop today.

First is Superman: Heroes #1. Originally solicited for January release, the book was postponed for reasons that are not yet clear. In fact, back in January it was announced that the book would be delayed until February 19. So depending on how you look at it, the book is either two weeks late or one week early. *shrug* Maybe we'll know why it changed dates so much when we read it. (BleedingCool.com has the preview.)

Also available today for the first time is Justice League: Corporate Maneuvers trade, reprinting for the first time the first four issues of the Justice League Quarterly anthology. Twenty-five dollars seems a fair price for finally getting Booster Gold's black leather jacket printed on some high-quality paper.

Buy one or both and make Skeets happy.

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