BOOSTERRIFIC! BLOG

Monday, January 7, 2013

Trophy Room or Storage Shed?

What? No one wants a stab at identifying the objects in the JLA trophy room? Maybe that's why they canceled Wizard magazine.

That's okay. There are a lot of obscure things in the JLA Trophy Room. Take this panel, for example.

Of all the things that need labeling in this image from JLA #6, Green Arrow's "Trick Arrows" shouldn't even make the list. It's not like the League has had a lot of green-themed archers.

While most of the items in this image are rare indeed, at least one item should be strikingly familiar to fans of Booster Gold. That's the Blue Beetle-prototype Mark II Booster Gold armor in the bottom right. Booster only wore that suit for less than nine months in 1993 after his original 25th-century armor was destroyed in the fight with Doomsday. The Mark II was very quickly replaced with an improved model.

Don't think for a minute that's the only Booster Gold item on display in the JLI Trophy Room. Booster's far too important for just one item! I've got more tomorrow.

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Friday, January 4, 2013

Counting Down the Hits

For the past three years, I've been keeping record of raw page requests from the Boosterrific.com server. (You'll note a break in the graph around Oct 2012; that was when the forum was being remotely spammed by bots. I have therefore eliminated that data.)

Boosterrific.com Hits, 2010-2012

The high water mark was November 2011. The coming of the New 52 sure did generate a lot of buzz, didn't it?

This second graph is what Google says the Boosterrific.com page hits are. Google only tracks hits that activate the embedded Javascript code, so it completely ignores hits from bots and spiders, some mobile devices, and any pages which do have not the Google Analytics code embedded (which includes some of the deeper pages in the site, including the house ads and some forum pages). The numbers from Google are, understandably, considerably lower.

Boosterrific.com Hits, 2010-2012

What a big difference automated spiders make! Note that so far as Google is concerned, the apex was in Spring 2011, when the coming of the New 52 was announced. So as the humans departed, robots took over? That sounds about right.

Many thanks to everyone who has visited the site in the past 3 years, especially those of you with eyeballs and fingers.

Comments (0) | Add a Comment | Tags: google graphs website update

Thursday, January 3, 2013

Hope for the Future

If you had the ability to travel through time, you'd have to use it. With great power comes great Birthday parties.

Last week's poll question: If you were Booster Gold, how would you celebrate your -430th birthday on December 29, 2012? (33 votes)

Putting 2012 in our rear view mirrors, let's look forward to the great things we plan to experience with Booster Gold in 2013!

Comments (6) | Add a Comment | Tags: 2012 2013 polls

deusex2 posted on Jan. 3, 2013 at 1:22 PM
Can we have "starring in a hit television show all the while fixing Flashpoint with the Time Masters?"

CDN posted on Jan. 3, 2013 at 4:15 PM
What do I EXPECT, or what do I HOPE? Hope would be Fixing Flashpoint, what I EXPECT, is joining the League. DC pushed him for years and Booster's on the cusp of being as recognizable as Hal, Barry, and the other "Non-Trinity" League Members. I doubt he'll ever get Bat-level of fame, but Booster's right close to being in DC's top 10 most recognized characters.

Boosterrific [Official Comment] posted on Jan. 3, 2013 at 6:21 PM
I wonder, CDN, is Booster really that well recognized? I'd like to hope so, but I still have my doubts. There are lots of characters I would expect people to know but don't. For example, Martian Manhunter should be a household name, but when I talk to people who haven't actually read JUSTICE LEAGUE brand comics for decades, I find he has surprisingly low recognition value. (Television, I find, has far more influence with superhero "fans" than comic books actually do.) I wonder how we can test Booster's true Q rating among fans who didn't actually buy BOOSTER GOLD or JUSTICE LEAGUE INTERNATIONAL?

CDN posted on Jan. 4, 2013 at 6:20 AM
Well, going by some of my comicbook friends who have been reading comics for FAAAAAR longer than I have, I've had a few point out to me that I shouldn't consider Booster someone on DC's "D-List". These are Bat-fan friends, HAL JORDAN fan friend, Flash Rogue fan friend....they all have told me I can't say Booster's not turning into a DC heavy hitter. At least that was before the Nu52. I've asked a few of my none-comic book fan friends too, if they know of Booster Gold. Reactions usually range from "Who?" to "That's the loser who sold himself out, right?" to "That Doctor Who rip-off guy, ya?" Also, DC would never give the "OK" to a script for someone they didn't feel was recognizable. As ironic as it sounds for DC, I doubt they're that dumb. You can't sell what people don't know, people need to know what's being sold. In the current DC universe, whi'd have expect they would just turn around and shove Cyborg into the spotlight/JL? Before Flashpoint, I'm sure no one knew much about Vic, other than him being a Teen Titan. I'd say, out of the three "League" books out there, Booster's probably more recognizable than more than half the characters in all three books. Katana, Vibe, Cyborg...Only reason people will know Vibe is because of all the flak DC got for bringing him back. --Side note-- Rereading before posting....and if this comes off as unintelligible, I'm writing this at 6 in the morning, in need of sleep. Or a Time Sphere.

Grimmy posted on Jan. 4, 2013 at 12:09 PM
I'd say Booster is in the same recognition ballpark as the Question. And he's even "still" the same person, despite having his fashion sense scrambled in a universe reboot. sigh

Boosterrific [Official Comment] posted on Jan. 4, 2013 at 2:42 PM
"in need of sleep. Or a Time Sphere." Awesome.

Obviously, you don't remember DC's big Cyborg push in the early 80s, when he was on the SUPERFRIENDS and became the Super Powers Collection action figure that nobody wanted. FLASHPOINT marks at least the third big push DC has given Cyborg. (Personally, I feel if he was such a great character, DC wouldn't have to keep reinventing him every decade in the face of public indifference.)

As to whether DC would promote unknown products to mass media: see BIRDS OF PREY (ask your non-comic book friends who Black Canary is) and two different HUMAN TARGET television series (I would wager a sizable amount that most people have no idea he was a Bronze Age backup character), as well as CONSTANTINE (starring an American John Constantine) and THE LOSERS. I'm still not sure that Swamp Thing was well known when he got his film and television shows. (Is the character well known now?) The general public had no idea who those characters were, but someone at DC felt that they were marketable properties despite relatively low Q ratings compared to longstanding Justice League characters.

Wednesday, January 2, 2013

New Release: JLI Vol. 2 Breakdown

Remember Justice League International Volume 3? It seems like forever since it was cancelled and then resurrected in that wretched annual just so that Dan Didio could dance on its ashes. DC has finally gotten around to collecting the last of it into a trade.

Justice League International Volume 2: Breakdown is to be released today. (How long has it been since I've run a "New Releases" item?) The trade collects Justice League International Vol. 3, #7-12, The Fury of Firestorm, The Nuclear Men #9, and Justice League International Annual #1.

Although the volume will sell for a very reasonable $16.99, I don't think you'll find many who will recommend this volume. I suspect that reading Dan Jurgens' glacially-paced story crawl to its inevitable heat-death conclusion only to find that story largely ignored and contradicted in the included Annual will probably be even more dissatisfying than reading the episodic issues with a forced, monthly cooling-off period between each issue.

What I'm trying to say, ladies and gentlemen, is that I have read Extreme Justice. Extreme Justice was a friend of mine. And the stories in this trade are no Extreme Justice.

Read at your own risk.

Comments (3) | Add a Comment | Tags: justice league international new releases

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Trophy Room or Storage Shed?

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Counting Down the Hits

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Hope for the Future

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New Release: JLI Vol. 2 Breakdown

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