Look what showed up my mailbox!

Believe it or not, that's my first Dan Jurgens sketch. I wasn't expecting it — I was only expecting Dan to sign a copy of Russ Burlingame's The Gold Exchange: The Deluxe Edition, not sketch in it — and I was not emotionally prepared for how much I was going to love it.

I love the high collar. I love the shades of gray washes (the exact colors of Booster's personal ethics). I especially love how the sketchiness of it makes Booster look older, as though Booster has been growing old along with me.

So now I've got everything I want in life. It's all downhill from here.

Big thanks to Jurgens (and Russ Burlingame) for making all my previously unrecognized dreams come true.

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Let me just turn today's post over to Jake, who emails:

I don't keep up with this series (nor was I, in truth, completely aware of its existence), but I am now. Speed Force #3 has Booster Gold back in business, as pictured. I want that cup!

You say you haven't been reading this series, Jake, so you may not be aware that the price of "that cup" is probably your autonomy, as the evil backers of the Symphonee music app are planning to take over the minds of the gullible youths who listen to their music.

(Incidentally, this is exactly the plot of the 2001 Josie and the Pussycats movie, which I can whole-heartedly recommend.)

Is Booster Gold unaware of Symphonee's evil plans? Has our hero been mind-controlled like some of the Teen Titans, or is he simply being an opportunistic shill hoping to ride the coattails of whatever the popular app of the moment is (not unlike how celebrity influencers promoted NFTs in 2021)?

Given that Booster's cup is the McGuffin that motivates Roundhouse to attend Symphonee's upcoming music festival, will we be seeing more Booster in future issues of this mini-series? Let's hope so.

In the meantime, buy Speed Force #3 and make Skeets happy.

Thanks for the pic, Jake.

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Almost a year ago, I shared the news that Skeets could be seen in the then-recently leaked Warner Bros animated movie Scooby-Doo! and Krypto, Too! that may or may not have been canceled by the studio.

In a happy update to that post, the movie was definitely not canceled and has now been released to Max where alert subscribers can finally (legally) briefly see Skeets in a case with a model of Blue Beetle's Bug as Krypto flies through the Hall of Justice!

In case you blink at the wrong time, here's a screenshot:

Thanks to everyone who wrote in with the good news.

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Thanks to the unique combination of Keith Giffen's plotting and layouts, J.M. DeMatteis's vaudevillian dialogue, and Kevin Maguire's rendering of body language and facial expressions, almost every page in Justice League International #19 is a standalone delight.

From Ice Maiden falling for Guy Gardner to Green Flame hitting on Lobo to Oberon saying goodbye to Black Canary to Superman rejecting Batman: pick a page at random, and it's probably a winner.

But the best page, my favorite page, is the one where Booster Gold and Blue Beetle get a door slammed in their faces.

If you ask me, turkeys are much more intimidating than beetles.

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As Booster booster Rob Snow alerted me, after months of Booster Gold references, we actually get to see our hero on panel in this weeks' Fire & Ice: Welcome to Smallville #5!

Is it just me, or is it starting to feel like none of the New 52 continuity applies anymore? I feel like I opened a comic book to find Bobby Ewing taking a shower. (If you don't get that reference, kids, you're on the wrong website. Your homework is to go watch something from back when television was good, specifically the 1985 Dallas season 9 episode, "Blast from the Past.")

The events of this series have some really weird, life-threatening things happening, things that it would seem would not go unnoticed by a particular Man of Steel. Things like several gristly murders and much destruction of property. Makes me wonder why the story's setting is Smallville and not a suburb of Gotham, where these sorts of things wouldn't attract so much attention amidst the psycho clowns and sewer-dwelling crocodile-men.

The solicitation text for next month's mini-series final issue teases "the fate of Smallville itself hangs in the balance!" After reading issue 5, I can believe it.

Buy this issue and make Skeets happy.

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