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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Booster Gold does not appear in this week's DC's Spring Breakout! one-shot, but that's apparently only because he was too anxious to hit the waves.

This is the first panel of the fourth page in the anthology's fourth story, "The Day the Robot Danced":

words by James Reid, letters by Josh Reed

Hmm. A signed surfboard would be hard to frame and hang on the wall in my office, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't like to try.

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Booster booster J's emails are usually in regards to the many, many typographical and grammatical errors on this site. (I'll take all the help I can get, J. Thanks!) But the message in my inbox today was to let me know that Booster Gold gets a shout-out in this week's Flashpoint Beyond #2.

And here it is, from page 2:

words by Geoff Johns, Tim Sheridan, Jeremy Adams; art by Xermanico, Romulo Fajardo Jr, Rob Leigh

For the record, the rule here at Boosterrific.com is that we track all Booster Gold comic book visual appearances but not text-only dialogue references, much less the expositional internal monologue of a murderous Dr. Batman. (Back in the day, this name drop would be inside a bubbled thought balloon!)

Therefore, Flashpoint Beyond #2 will not be added to the Boosterrific Database, and this blog post will be the only place on the site you'll see it.

If that bothers you, I recommend that you get to your Local Comic Shop and pick up your own copy of Flashpoint Beyond #2, just like I did. A compulsive collector's job is never done!

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Long before they became breakout stars on the Batman: The Long Halloween, the team of Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale honed their long-form revisionist mysteries style on Challengers of the Unknown.

The limited series focuses on the aftermath of an unintentional tragedy that disbanded the titular Silver Age super team. Booster Gold never appeared in any of the mini-series' 8-issues, but Skeets did. Kind of.

Challengers of the Unknown #5, 1991

Metal Men? Inferior Five? Ragman? Brother Power the Geek? That's quite an odd assortment of lesser-known DC heroes. And that's Guy's point. When he made the statement in 1991, those characters had been barely seen for years.

Other than a single panel cameo alongside other Silver Age castaways in Millennium #8 (1988), the Challengers hadn't been seen since Crisis on Infinite Earths in 1986, and few of the others had done much better.

In fact, the only character Guy lists who had accrued any significant post-Crisis continuity was Skeets, who had been the sidekick of DC's first post-Crisis hero in 1986. Skeets was mothballed after the cancellation of Booster Gold volume 1 in 1988 and had ever since been stored in a JLI closet (as revealed in Adventures of Superman #476, 1991).

So while it seems like Guy is just being a jerk to reporter Harold Moffet, I like to think he's really concerned about the missing Skeets' welfare. What a good Guy!

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If you happened to pick up Wonder Woman #777 earlier this month, you may have recognized her gender-swapped Earth-11 counterpart, Wonder Man. What you may not have realized is that Wonder Man and Booster Gold have history. Sort of.

For the rest of that story, let's turn back the dial to Countdown Presents: The Search for Ray Palmer: Superwoman/Batwoman #1, the first appearance of Dane of Elysium, aka Wonder Man.

written by Justin Gray & Jimmy Palmiotti; art by Kalman Andrasofszky, Kanila Tripp, John J. Hill

Countdown Presents: The Search for Ray Palmer: Superwoman/Batwoman was released in 2008 as a tie-in to the year-long Countdown (to Final Crisis) series, and it re-introduced readers to Earth-11, an alternate universe first visited in 2005's Batman/Superman #23 — though it wasn't called "Earth-11" at that time. The reconstitution of the DC Multiverse in the wake of Infinite Crisis wouldn't be revealed until roughly two years later at the conclusion of 52. (And they say the DC Multiverse is too confusing. Pfft!)

As you can see from these panels, Earth-11 shares much of the history of Earth-1, including familiar events of Identity Crisis (2004), Wonder Woman #219 (2005), and Amazons Attack! (2007).

All Booster Gold fans will remember Maxwell Lord's killing of Blue Beetle in the accurately titled Countdown to Infinite Crisis. Well, on Earth-11, those events played out somewhat differently.

The Maxine Lord executed by Wonder Man didn't kill the female Blue Beetle. She killed Beetle's best friend: Booster Gold.

Thus, in a way, Wonder Man avenged Booster Gold's death!

A guy like that can't be all bad.

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