To make Google happy, I've been tinkering under the hood here at Boosterrific.com to change how news items are retrieved and archived. If all goes well, this should only result in some changed URLs, and the average site visitor will never notice any difference. If anyone finds anything broken, please let me know, but "I'm not expecting any trouble" are some pretty good last words. (Just ask CrowdStrike.)

Meanwhile, as a good test case for new blog posts going forward, Booster booster J has found a new "Booster Gold" appearance in a comic that isn't already in the Boosterrific Database.

I'm currently reading Volume 2 of The Flash, from 1987. I just wanted to point out that on the very last page of The Flash, Vol. 2 #2, Booster's name (together with the DC Comics logo) is advertised (in-universe!) on the side of a truck.

Here is that panel in particular, taken from The Flash: Savage Velocity collected edition:

written by Mike Baron; art by Jackson Guice, Larry Mahlstedt, Carl Gafford, Steve Haynie; edited by Mike Gold

The reason this book does not appear in the Boosterrific Database is because the character of Booster Gold himself does not appear in this issue. But cases like this are a key reason why the Boosterrific Blog exists. I even have a banner and tag for it:

I do not think I had posted about this before, but that's one of the reasons I'm trying to make the news archive more Google-friendly. Sometimes it's hard for even the archivist to find information buried in the dusty virtual bookshelves in Booster Cave! In any case, I have definitely blogged about it now, thanks to J.

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An assortment of small news items about recent events here at Boosterrific.com:

1. Thanks once again to Jake J for pointing out that the Boosterrific Database was missing several reprint collections, most recently Elseworlds: Justice League Volumes One, Two, and Three. Thanks for all your help, Jake J (who has emailed reminds me that he is NOT Jake. Sorry!).

2. While trying to make sense of the timeline in "Roses Are Red, Androids Are Blue" in DC's How to Lose a Guy Gardner in 10 Days, I stumbled across a previously undocumented one-panel Booster Gold appearance in JLA #119. Every time I think I've found them all, another appearance turns up. I love it!

3. If you didn't know it, a new, 2nd edition of the 2019 25th Anniversary Zero Hour: Crisis in Time Omnibus was released this week. I haven't seen it yet, but it is advertised as collecting "every chapter in the groundbreaking saga in chronological order." Does this 2nd edition include Booster Gold #0? (To the best of my knowledge, the 2019 edition did not.) If anyone can confirm or deny, please let me know.

4. Last week DC announced that their comics will once again be released on Wednesdays instead of Tuesdays beginning in July. When that happens, I'll be moving New Release updates to Wednesdays more consistently, just as I used to do. So don't say I didn't warn you.

5. To whomever reached out via the Boosterrific Contact form and asked "is it possible to anonymously submit in this contact": I cannot respond to your request because you didn't include a reply-to address, but the answer is mostly "yes." I do get to see the IP address that generated the request (which is necessary as an anti-spam measure), so if I look into that, I can approximate where you were in the world when you sent it. But otherwise, yeah, pretty vague.

6. If you haven't noticed, I created some more ads for the top of the pages during some recent downtime. You can see all of them on the Boosterrific Ads page. (I do tag them all internally as ads, so if you have an ad-blocker running, you may need to disable it to see them.)

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Late last week, Booster booster J sent me a bunch of new sighting of old ads to update the list of Boosterrific Advertisements. However, one of his finds is this:

That house advertisement comes from Flashpoint Companion, a collection of promotional material — mostly cover art — supporting the Flashpoint event.

So far as I can determine, Flashpoint Companion was a digital only release originally published online in 2012 at read.dccomics.com. Although DC discontinued that subdomain URL in 2013, you can still read it free online via DC Infinite, Google Play, Apple Books, or Amazon (and probably many others).

Other than this two-page spread — essentially a glorified reading list — the only actual "story" inside the book is a two-page "The Origin of the Flash" written by Scott Beatty (which, according to his blog, scottbeatty.blogspot.com, was originally created as a Converse shoe promotion, probably sometime around 2008-2009, as I believe it was included in the DC Universe: Origins collection of the 2-page origins published in 2010 Never mind. It's not in there).

In fact, it's probably worth mentioning that all the art for this promo was pulled from other sources. The central image of Flash comes from an Andy Kubert drawn house ad at the end of 2010's The Flash Volume 3 #1 (as you can see at Flash fansite speedforce.org). The background behind the Flash (a callback to the sublime wraparound slipcase cover for the Crisis on Infinite Earths hardcover by George Perez and Alex Ross) was taken from Flashpoint #5 (also drawn by Kubert).

The crackle section with Booster and Professor Zoom are the covers of Booster Gold #45 by Dan Jurgens, Norm Rapmund, and Hi-Fi Designs and Flashpoint: Reverse Flash #1 by Ardian Syaf and Vicente Cifuentes.

I don't find print copies of this thing documented online in any of the usual places, but it's possible it has been overlooked given its slight content. Does anyone know if Flashpoint Companion was ever officially published (i.e., committed to paper)? Perhaps as an in-store giveaway?

As a general rule, I confine mention of digital-only content to here on the Boosterrific Blog and leave it out of the larger tracking Boosterrific Database, in large part because digital content is so ephemeral, even by comic book standards. Should I make an exception here given the ubiquity of the free copies floating around online ten years after its original release? Oh, the headaches of being an obsessive comic book chronicler!

Hearty thanks to J for your ongoing efforts to make Boosterrific better than ever.

UPDATE: J adds via email

A few years ago, DC had booklets advertising various characters, such as Batman 101 and JSA 101, where they'd print a list of essential stories, a some two-page origin stories, and comic covers.... In the "Justice League 201" booklet, they'd reprinted the Origin of Booster Gold from 52 #24. But unfortunately, it seems to no longer be available.

Like the Flashpoint Companion, I believe those also only existed digitally, and my bias against tracking digital media applies. For years, DC made those 2-page origins available for free on their website as part of their character guides; that content seems to have evaporated as well.

And that's why I prefer physical floppies: DC can't take the paper away from me (unless they back a moving truck up to my house).

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Don't expect to see Booster Gold in any of this week's books. Don't expect to see him in any book in August, either.

DC released their August solicitations last week with nary a Booster in sight. Nor even a Dan Jurgens credit, which is important because Jurgens has historically been the one to sneak Booster back into the spotlight.

To be fair, most of the August books tie-in to the Knight Terrors event, and I can't say I'm sad that Booster looks to be missing out on that. (Perhaps he'll show up as a cameo appearance in someone else's nightmare?)

August does have a one-shot G'nort's Illustrated Swimsuit special. Could we see Booster in that? G'nort was Booster's Justice League International teammate for a while, and no hero in the DCU looks better in a swimsuit than our hero, as demonstrated in 2020's DC Cybernetic Summer!

And even if we don't have new comics coming, we've still got plenty of old comics to read. Comics like 2014's Scribblenauts Unmasked: A Crisis of Imagination #7. I didn't know about that one until J told me last week. Thanks, J.

Keep your eyes peeled, Booster boosters. You never know where you'll find Booster Gold next!

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Bad news first: DC's June 2023 solicitations are out at aiptcomics.cpom, and there's not a Booster Gold to be seen. That's 4 months and counting of no predictable appearances. This new "Dawn of DC" is looking less and less golden.

(Over the weekend, TwinCitiesGeek.com reported that Dan Jurgens has "started writing another Black Label project for DC" that "will be coming a little later yet this year." Seems unlikely that it'll be a Black Label Booster Gold story, but who knows?)

On the brighter side, while Booster is on hero hiatus, Boosterrific.com is better than ever thanks in no small part to J, who has spent an inordinate amount of time hunting down errors in the annotations and book details. Together, we're making things right that once went wrong.

Why, just this weekend, J discovered that the site was missing (count 'em!) two different Justice League Unlimited reprint volumes that contain Booster Gold adventures. Oops!

Shame on me for missing those, but hearty thanks to J for all the hard work. Booster boosters everywhere owe you a debt of gratitude. Keep up the good work!

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