Writer Joshua Williamson continues to channel Grant Morrison for Justice League Incarnate, and in this week's issue 3 the team takes a side trip to Earth-33 (the reincarnation of former Earth-Prime, home of the multiversal villain Superboy-Prime), now the Earth where ideas are born. One idea is obviously Booster Gold, as seen in this fella's t-shirt:

Footnote 1 — I know that this is a Booster Gold fansite, but I personally think that the real value of Justice League Incarnate #3 lies not in the reveal of "Booster Gold t-shirt guy" of Earth-33 but the discovery that Doctor Batman has been sent to Earth-26, formerly known as Earth-C. Last we'd heard, in Dark Nights: Death Metal: Multiverse's End #1, Captain Carrot's "funny animals" Earth-C Earth-26 Zoo Crew had been killed by Perpetua's minions (so dark!). It's good to know that my favorite childhood heroes are alive and well again in the Infinite Frontier-era Omniverse. Hooray!

Footnote 2 — Earth-26, Earth-Prime, Earth-33, Earth-C, Multiverse, Hypertime, Dark Multiverse, Omniverse... boy, howdy. Does anyone else remember that 1985's Crisis on Infinite Earths was supposed to simplify the DC Universe to make it accessible to new readers? So why, now that the multiverse is back, is it more complicated than ever before? Did we finally just give up on new readers?

Footnote 3 — Both Justice League Incarnate and Justice League Infinity, both released this week and both featuring Booster Gold references, are about plots to destroy the multiverse. (Technically, they are separate multiverses, as the JLU never crosses over with the original JLA.) It sure seems like even DC's writers think the darn thing has gotten too complicated.

Oops. I'm starting to sound a bit like Superboy-Prime myself, aren't I?

Never mind grumpy old me. Buy some comics and make Skeets happy.

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As webmaster of the Internet's premiere website dedicated solely to Booster Gold, I get several automated lists a week keeping me informed of Booster Gold references around the World Wide Web.

Some of these notifications are useful; others, less so. Automated bots and the rise of aggregator websites generally mean that I have a bunch of gibberish links to sort through each week. But they're not my least favorite return. That dishonor belongs to CBR.com listicles, especially when they're wrong.

Take, for example, "10 Superheroes With Siblings We All Forget About," which includes Booster Gold at number 6:

Seeing old news reports of her older brother being a big-time superhero in the 21st century, Michelle Carter decided to follow his path and become a hero herself. Calling herself Goldstar, Michelle's superhero career didn't last nearly as long as Booster's. After Booster's future suit was destroyed by Doomsday, he repurposed his sister's to build a new one.

That's wrong.

Goldstar's Jack Soo-created costume had nothing to do with Booster's post-Doomsday powersuits (most designed by tech wizard Ted Kord). Not only did Booster never show any hint of Goldstar's magnetism powers, that one-of-a-kind suit was seen destroyed during Michelle's fatal encounter with the Dimension X aliens in Booster Gold #22.

Another incorrect fact is reported in "10 DC Characters Who Have Never Actually Died," which lists Booster at 8:

He has faked his death before, but he's never actually died, which is a pretty big accomplishment for someone who has fought the kind of threats he has; whether it be against the enemies of the Justice League or saving the timestream, Booster Gold does one thing better than mostーsurvives.

That's also wrong, if only by technicalities.

An ill-fated confrontation on Mount Everest between Booster Gold and the villainous Devastator left our hero in such bad shape that the world's best surgeons couldn't save him. He was pronounced clinically dead in Justice League International #65.

Booster Gold cheated death in that situation thanks to the coincidental intervention of the Overmaster, who stopped everyone on the planet from dying until he was defeated, by which time Booster was safely strapped into new life-supporting armor designed by — guess who? — the Blue Beetle, Ted Kord.

But Beetle wasn't around to save Booster in 52 Week 15. Sure, there were some time-travel shenanigans in that story, but it's hard to argue that someone is "faking" death when you're looking at his actual corpse.

Which brings us to perhaps my least favorite of the recent listicles, "10 Unlikable DC Heroes You're Supposed To Root For," which once again puts Booster Gold at number 8.

He's also done quite a bit to mess up the DC timeline. As annoying as he is with pulling pranks and constantly searching to get paid from big sponsorships, he has also selfishly made small adjustments that had drastic effects on the universe.

That's... reasonably accurate, assuming you ignore the fact that Booster has always admitted to and cleaned up after his own mistakes.

From the beginning, Booster Gold was *designed* to be unlikable. That's pretty much the original point of the character: Could a flawed person in a flawed society still be a force for good? Booster Gold is Dan Jurgens' answer.

What's really wrong with this listicle is buried all the way at the end of the article. While I might personally argue with the inclusion of several of the other heroes on this highly subjective list, number one on the countdown is none other than Superman, declared unlikable for "being near perfect in his morals and his abilities." How could anyone with the compassion and drive to help advance mankind ethically be "unlikable"? Boring, maybe. Sometimes preachy and often square, sure. But even Booster Gold *likes* Superman!

Booster Gold #6

Make up your mind, CBR. If you hate on Booster for being too flawed and Superman for being too perfect, all you're saying is that you don't really like comic book super heroes. Around here, nothing could be more wrong than that.

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I realized last week that I am not enjoying comics as much as I once did, as I have for most of my life. I'm not sure it's comics' fault. Twenty-twenty has been a rough year for everyone, and it's still far from over. Maybe I'm just having a mid-year crisis.

The last time I felt this way about comics was in 2011 when the New 52 initiative steamrolled over the post-Crisis on Infinite Earths DC Universe. I got over that (forgiven, not forgotten). Maybe I'll get over this. But there is another, bigger problem that's cropped up since 2011: I don't enjoy going to the comic shop anymore.

A couple of years ago, ownership of my Local Comic Shop changed hands, and the people I used to know who worked and shopped there are long gone. You really don't know what a difference it makes to have a great relationship with your Local Comic Shop until it's gone. Even before the pandemic started, the new management with its new business philosophy began cutting orders to reduce stock beyond pull requests, and I'm starting to discover that they often don't have books I want after final order cutoff. (Not that I want a ton these days. I could complain about so many things, but let's say no monthly ongoing featuring Booster Gold is the tip of that iceberg.)

Comics have gotten expensive enough that I was already watching the proverbial purse strings. Now, in addition to exorbitant cover prices, will I have to add the time cost traveling an hour or more to find the few books I want? Or worse, will I need to add the price of shipping to any future acquisitions? If I didn't already have a basement full of long boxes holding decades of stories, I might consider going digital, but the publishers charge the same price for paper as they do for DRM rentals. After decades of being told that by publishers we have to pay more for the good paper, there's no way I'm paying the same price for a comic "printed" on virtual pixels. (I assume the publishers do that to appease the direct marketeers. I, however, am not one of those, and I feel very unappeased.)

That's all to say that it's starting to become a hassle for me to get my hands on the comics that I'm not even sure I want to read anymore, and I'm frustrated that I don't have any good solutions for those problems right now. Maybe I will later.

Can 2020 please end soon?

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Every year I take a week off and turn the blog into the Internet's version of a clip show as I count down the most read posts of the past year at Boosterrific.com.

The third most popular post last year was my rant about CBR recklessly spreading rumors from Twitter, originally posted February 13.

Before I rant a bit — it's my website, and I'll rant if I want to! — let me say that I don't want to discourage anyone from sending me anything that they think is Boosterrific, I really don't. I want your input, and I will always try to be polite and thankful for anything you send me.

But paying so much attention to a teasing tweet not because Dan Jurgens posted it on Twitter but because CBR reposted it? Really? CBR? A once-great website of comics journalism that lobotomized itself in a bid to become the BuzzFeed of comics/movie/television entertainment? At least when Megan Peters covered the tweet for ComicBook.com, she added some context! But CBR? "Hey, look! A thing!" Grr!

I know that I shouldn't be irritated. It's no one's fault but mine that I underestimated how excited Booster Gold fans would be that Dan Jurgens might actually be drawing the character again no matter what the medium or purpose. I should have immediately posted Jurgens' tweet here in the Boosterrific Blog on Wednesday. And I certainly can't expect anyone else to share my biases against CBR. For all of those oversights and failures, I apologize. I'll try to do better in the future.

(For the record, Jurgens' "teasing tweet" turned out to be a hint that he was providing the alternate cover to summer's Booster Gold/Flintstones Special.)

I can't say my opinion of CBR.com has improved much in the months since, but at least when we've had cause to talk about Dan Jurgens pencilling Booster Gold lately, it's been because Booster's finally back in action.

We'll continue the countdown on Wednesday.

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Tuesday, Booster Gold creator and current Action Comics scribe Dan Jurgens posted the following tweet:

Later that day, Morgenstern posted a link to the tweet in the Boosterrific Forum. Because it is likely that Jurgens was referring to Booster Gold, I retweeted the message via @boosterrific. That was the last I expected to hear about that, at least until we had some new information. (Does "BG" stand for what we want it to? Why be coy about it? Why is he drawing it?) I was wrong.

Late Thursday night, CBR.com reposted the tweet on their site. I assumed that was because they were more starved for content than usual. The post, by Jim Johnson, adds nothing to the tweet that isn't visible from the original post. However, within hours of that post, multiple people reached out to me to say, "Have you seen this on CBR.com?" Yes, I had.

Before I rant a bit — it's my website, and I'll rant if I want to! — let me say that I don't want to discourage anyone from sending me anything that they think is Boosterrific, I really don't. I want your input, and I will always try to be polite and thankful for anything you send me.

But paying so much attention to a teasing tweet not because Dan Jurgens posted it on Twitter but because CBR reposted it? Really? CBR? A once-great website of comics journalism that lobotomized itself in a bid to become the BuzzFeed of comics/movie/television entertainment? At least when Megan Peters covered the tweet for ComicBook.com, she added some context! But CBR? "Hey, look! A thing!" Grr!

I know that I shouldn't be irritated. It's no one's fault but mine that I underestimated how excited Booster Gold fans would be that Dan Jurgens might actually be drawing the character again no matter what the medium or purpose. I should have immediately posted Jurgens' tweet here in the Boosterrific Blog on Wednesday. And I certainly can't expect anyone else to share my biases against CBR. For all of those oversights and failures, I apologize. I'll try to do better in the future.

TLDR: For some reason, Dan Jurgens told the world he is drawing something that starts with the initials "BG," and I didn't tell you. But don't worry, CBR.com has you covered.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'll crawl back into my cave.

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