My friends Mike and Keith are big fans of "The Dresden Files" books by Jim Butcher, and they were eager to tell me that Booster Gold is name-checked in the latest book, Battle Ground, as you can see below.

That page makes no sense to me, but I suppose jumping into any novel on page 153 would be confusing.

Despite my friends' urging, I have not read any of "The Dresden Files" books. I bought the first one, Storm Front, but only got through the first chapter before loaning it to my father, who was looking for something new to read in the hospital. I haven't seen it since (though Dad has now read the first 16 in the series).

Apparently, fans of the series know what I didn't, that protagonist wizard Harry Dresden — as Wikipedia tells us:

Harry prefers to drive his Volkswagen Beetle because the simple technology powering it makes it less likely to be adversely affected by his magic, and it can be fixed easily. He refers to it as the "Blue Beetle" due to its original color, though damage by supernatural creatures has forced him to replace several pieces of the bodywork in different colors.

Despite Harry's objection, comic book fans will agree that "Booster Gold" is the prefect callsign for someone associated with the Blue Beetle.

For the record, Battle Ground, the 17th "Dresden" book, was released in September. It can now be found in fine bookstores everywhere (and I'm sure it will make a good gift for my father this Christmas).

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I don't speak Spanish, but I know gold when I see it.

According to the Spanish-language website of the Argentine illustrator Jeremias Janikow, this sketch is of "Buster Gold (el banana del futuro)." With a subtitle like that, I have to suspect that calling Booster "Buster" is an intentional slight. Poor Booster. No respect even in Argentina.

When I first spotted this image, I had no idea what "mate cocido" was. According to Wikipedia, I now know that it is a tea-like drink prepared from the yerba mate plant that is popular in South America. The things that you learn running a Booster Gold fansite!

This is just one of several exceptional superheroes sketches by Janikow that can be found on Janikow Blog!. Thanks to The Day the Web Stood Stupid for drawing this tasty art to our attention.

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If you look around the Internet for information on Booster Gold, you might discover a book titled Influential Superheroes of All Time: Booster Gold attributed to Elizabeth Dummel. This 240-page book is one in a series assembled by Ms. Dummel about comic book super heroes. If dig a little deeper into this book, you'll invariably encounter this disclaimer from the publisher:

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. This book presents a fictional biography of one influential superhero character that greatly influenced the world, Booster Gold. This book puts together a showcase of the character's fictional biography and his influence over the world's culture. Read about Booster Gold's powers and abilities, enemies, creators, and more.

"Free sources online"? Has the information been vetted to validate unqualified statements on Wikipedia about Booster speaking "Esperanto as his first language"? (Besides a joke by Blue Beetle, there is no proof of this.) Does the book use the information from Adherents.com to identify Booster Gold as an atheist? (Another one-off punchline with no other supporting evidence.) How seriously does the book take reports from FanExpo 2011 about Booster's New 52 Canadian citizenship? (Much reported, never repeated in canon.) And most importantly, does that mean that the book includes content from Boosterrific.com?

The publisher, Webster Digital Services, defends the book's content as legal under under Creative Commons licensing. That may be technically true, but don't expect any great insight from their copy-and-paste publications of Google search results.

For awhile, the book was available on Amazon.com, although that no longer seems to be the case. Copies are still on eBay.com and BarnesandNoble.com for about $25 apiece. If that's the going rate for republished Wikipedia entries, the content at Boosterrific.com must be priceless!

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