For today's post, I asked Microsoft Copilot with GPT-4 for an essay about Skeets. The following is what it wrote.

In the grand theater of superheroes, where capes flutter and muscles bulge, there's a duo that flips the script - Booster Gold and his robotic sidekick, Skeets. But let's be honest, who's the real hero here?

Booster Gold may have the biceps, but Skeets has the brains. He's like a walking, talking encyclopedia from the future. While Booster is busy flexing his muscles, Skeets is flexing his circuits, predicting future events with the accuracy of a weather forecast. And we all know how often those are right!

Booster Gold may be the one with the shiny suit, but when things go south, who's the one saving the day? That's right, our metallic friend Skeets. When Booster gets knocked out, Skeets is there to pick up the slack. He's like the reliable friend who always remembers to bring the snacks to a movie night.

While Booster Gold is busy signing autographs and basking in the limelight, Skeets is the one doing the real work. He's the one navigating through time, providing strategic advice, and occasionally taking over Booster's motor functions. Talk about multitasking!

So, who's the real superhero here? The guy with the flashy suit and charming smile, or the small, hovering robot with the knowledge of the future and the patience of a saint? I think we all know the answer. So here's to Skeets, the unsung hero of the duo, proving that sometimes, the sidekick is the real MVP.

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Booster Gold appears two new books this week!

If you recall the end of Speed Force #5, Booster was the MC for the kickoff of the Symphonee Music Festival. What the reading audience knows — and Booster doesn't — is that Symphonee is actually a mind-control app that the Fiddler, Mad Mod, Music Meister, and Klarion the Witch Boy have built with the ultimate goal of... brainwashing teens for money? Okay, I admit, their ultimate goal still isn't quite clear.

Booster should have known better than to get involved in a business run by a bunch of super-villains. Therefore, it's up to Kid Flash to save the day in Speed Force #6 (preview online at AIPTComics.com):

It might be too late to cut and run, Booster. Do you think the general public is likely to forget that you already went on tv and announced you were a sponsor of this festival — with accompanying merchandise? Those "one-of-a-kind" Booster Gold Symphonee collectors cups are destined to turn up as evidence in a lawsuit and as punchlines on late night talk shows.

Elsewhere, in the backup story in Green Lantern #10, Booster and Skeets have a whole page to debate Booster's declining media exposure. No preview is available for this one, but you shouldn't need one once I tell you that it was drawn by Kevin Maguire!

Buy these issues and make Skeets happy.

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For your weekend entertainment: https://www.boosterrific.com/ask-skeets/.

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I've updated the pictures and links, but the text in the following post originally ran ten years ago today, on January 29, 2014. So it's a double throwback! (Will I run it again in 2034? Stick around, and we'll find out together.)

Do you remember January, 1991? The New York Giants won Super Bowl XXV. Operation Desert Storm began. Vanilla Ice won Favorite New Hip Hop Artist at the American Music Awards. Ah, those were good times. Unless you were Booster Gold.

On this date in 1991, Booster Gold was hunted by the Linear Man, the first of what would come to be recognized as the policemen of history in the DC Universe. Desperate to make Booster pay for his crime of stealing a time machine and returning to the past, the original Linear Man kidnapped and tortured Skeets. Bad cop!

Fortunately for Booster, this attack took place in The Adventures of Superman #476 — that's not a typo, kids: back in the day books kept consecutive numbering for years instead of resetting every few months — so of course Superman got involved and was displaced in time instead of our hero.

The story played out in the "Time and Time Again" storyline over the following month, but Booster Gold had already been rescued by Superman and was too busy leading the Conglomerate and watching Tonya Harding win the U.S. Figure Skating Championships to return the favor. Oh, Booster!

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And so at last we reach the end of Booster Gold Volume 1. It is, without a doubt, the ugliest of all 25 original issues.

Robert Campanella's inks are not a good fit for Dan Jurgens' pencils, and even most of Jurgens' layouts are subpar. Either this issue was rushed through editorial to fit the aggressive Millennium publishing schedule, or all the visual artists involved were in a hurry to move on to greener pastures. Maybe both.

(In my opinion, this issue is the only one in volume one that I think looks definitively superior in the often careless recolored digital reprints over the original newsprint publication.)

It's really a shame about the art, because the Dan Jurgens' script deserves better. It hits all the right notes as it forces Booster to face the down-side of publicity (in an American fast food restaurant) with a Communist providing outside perspective.

It also cleverly draws in the Justice League characters Booster is closest to while setting our hero up for a triumphant come-back in the future. Both of those latter elements factor into my favorite page of Booster Gold #25 (especially Beetle's lecture in panel 2):

Yeah! What Beetle said!

That's what I like so much about Booster Gold. His path meanders, but he always gets to the right place in the end.

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