As Jade pointed out in the comments last week, Booster Gold can be seen in the recent 400th episode of Teen Titans Go!. (Did you hear it's the longest-running DC animated series ever? It beats out second place by... over 230 episodes. So maybe this is old news.)

Although it aired on November 30, I haven't yet seen the full episode myself. Fortunately, Cartoon Network has uploaded a "First Look!" teaser on YouTube:

Thanks for the update, Jade!

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The title of the most recent Happy Sad Confused podcast is "James Gunn talks SUPERMAN, CREATURE COMMANDOS, BATMAN, LANTERNS, Marvel," so it might surprise you that at the 22:08 mark, host Josh Horowitz directly questions guest James Gunn about the state of the Booster Gold television show.

Josh Horowitz: When Booster Gold came on the scene, that initial twenty-five comic book run is one my favorites ever. So, are we getting close? Because there's been… I'll just ask you point blank: there's a lot of rumors that Kumail [Nanjiani] is going to be your Booster Gold. Can you comment either way?

James Gunn: I mean, we're not quite there yet in terms of Booster Gold. … We're just not quite there. In terms of the scripts aren't quite where I want them to be. You know, from the beginning, you know, I've made it clear that the one thing that we're going to do at DC is no matter what, we're going to wait until the screenplays and the teleplays are ready before we shoot them. And I'm not going to shoot anything until I'm happy with it. … There's other things out there that we're moving. But other things aren't quite there yet. Booster Gold is not quite there.

Note how Gunn carefully doesn't confirm or deny anything while he explains that there is not currently a Booster Gold series ready for production (despite the fact that people have been working on developing Booster Gold scripts for the past 13 years). Make of that what you will.

You can see the whole interview at YouTube.com.

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Booster booster J writes in to say:

I'm writing with additional information about the house ad memorial for Keith Giffen. This ad also appears in the issue DC's 'Twas The 'Mite Before Christmas #1.

The ad J is talking about is this one which ran in books released a year ago this week:

J's tips are usually pretty reliable, but as it happens, I have the issue open in font of me right now, and it most definitely does not have the ad in it.

But I'm not calling J a liar.

What I suspect happened, and I am unable to communicate with J directly to confirm this because J never sends a reply address, but what I suspect happened is that J was looking at a digital release of the issue. DC has often had different house ads in digital releases than what they print in their books. I'm sure this is largely because they have to print physical books far in advance of publication, but digital assets can be manipulated up to the moment of release (and often after).

Because I do not trust that digital files have not been manipulated, I resist listing digital-only Booster Gold appearances in the Boosterrific Database, and I'm going to resist it in this case, too.

This is not the first time J has pointed me towards digital assets that the Boosterrific Database willfully ignores. See also: "A Thing I Do Not Know What To Do With," posted on Sept 18, 2023.

Thanks for the notes, J. Keep those corrections coming.

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Last week, the Guy Behind the Counter at my Local Comic Shop was complaining that DC was cancelling one Green Lantern title to make room for another. There should be room for more than two Green Lantern comics at a time, he lamented. As a Booster Gold fan, I'd very much settle for one.

The automated text at the top of this page informs us that it's been over two months since Booster Gold was last seen exiting the DC Universe in All In. There's no sign that the streak will be ending this week, although I suppose there's a non-zero chance that Booster might cameo in one of the Christmas specials, either DC's Batman Smells, Robin Laid an Egg one-shot or Batman / Santa Claus: Silent Knight Returns miniseries. It's Christmas, Batman; let some other heroes share the spotlight for a change!

For what it's worth, next week, Booster will be appearing in bit parts in new reprints DC Finest: Zero Hour, Part 1 and The Death and Return of Superman 30th Anniversary Collection. And week after next, we get reprints of Multiversity Harley Screws Up the DCU. Certainly, old Booster Gold cameo appearances are better than none.

Maybe DC is setting Booster up for his own Absolute title. That storyline in All In has to pay off sometime, right? (Is Booster Gold the Pariah of the Absolute Universe? What a crisis!)

Could be worse, I guess. In addition to not appearing in enough comic books, Booster Gold could also have been the subject of a big-budget film loathed by critics and audiences alike. Sometimes it's worse to get what you want than nothing at all.

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It has become an annual tradition for the President of the United States to "pardon" a turkey for Thanksgiving. Technically, a pardon is a legal forgiveness for having committing a crime, so the word really shouldn't apply to turkeys. We should say that they were granted clemency because they didn't do anything illegal prior to the imposition of their death sentence.

But what if they did?

Although Abraham Lincoln often gets the credit, the truth is that in November 1963, John Kennedy was the first president to pardon an unnamed turkey. "The turkey will probably live a long and happy life as a result of his presidential pardon," reported the Associated Press. Only, as we now know, it didn't.

As it turns out, The Turkey With No Name would soon be given a name: Patient Zero. After the turkey returned to its home in California, it was discovered the turkey was a carrier of the virus then known as "fowl plague." Today we recognize it as influenza A, more commonly called bird flu.

Bird flu is highly contagious and has been responsible for crossing species and killing millions of human beings around the world. In 1963, there was no treatment for the disease, and the only way to prevent the spread was to take swift and decisive action and cull entire flocks of birds... and anyone else who had contact with the infected fowl, including the popular President of the United States. (To prevent public panic over a potential pandemic, such extreme actions were undertaken surreptitiously with suspicion cast on convenient scapegoats.)

Any well-intentioned time travelers aware of this terrible and sordid chain of events might be tempted to take it upon themselves to "improve" history by going back in time and killing the turkey before it could trigger such a tragic spiral. However, as we all know, changing history can have dire unintended consequences. Ensuring that history plays out the way it must is the lonely but necessary job of a Time Cop, preferably one with a force field impenetrable to disease.

Thanks for performing your thankless job, Booster Gold!

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