Writes Joe C.:

Booster gold sighting!!!! Check out the 2024–25 upper deck DC annual trading cards. Card number 86 is booster gold (and Skeets).

Joe's right. The Upper Deck 2024-25 DC Annual trading card set debuted last month, and Booster (and Skeets!) is card 86 in the Base Set. As you can see, the card reuses the Daniel Sampere art from page 22 panel 1 of "Alpha" from DC All In Special #1.

And here's the back (apparently written by someone who is not particularly familiar with Booster Gold or the events of DC All In Special #1):

If you want to get yourself a copy of card 86, you're in luck! It's pretty easy to come by. Pictured above is the most common Base Set edition. There are a total of 100 cards in the Base Set, and each pack of 5 cards contains 3 Base Set cards, which means there's an almost 6% chance of drawing a Booster Gold Base Set card from any single pack. Assuming a truly random distribution, you've got a 50-50 chance of pulling a Booster Gold Base Set card from as few as 22 packs. You're all but guaranteed one in 152 packs.

There are 16 packs in a $95 Hobby Box. You've got a better-than-a-coin-flip's chance of finding a Booster Gold Base Set card in 2 Hobby Boxes, but you'll need 10 to be sure. Or you can do what I did and go buy it on eBay for less than $5. Whatever makes you happy.

It's worth noting at this point that Upper Deck thinks they can get you to buy more than 10 Hobby Boxes. Many, many more.

Each of the 100 Base Set cards, Booster Gold included, has variants. The most common of those variants is the Blue Parallel, which adds a blue foil background. But you can't find those in Hobby Boxes. Blue Parallels only come in Blaster Boxes, which contain one Blue Parallel card and 6 packs for $25. You'll need 459 of those (cost: $11,475) to be sure of getting a Booster Gold Blue Parallel card.

The Blue Parallel is the most common variant, but it's hardly the only one. There is also a Variant Cover Parallel which features different Daniel Sampere artwork from DC All In Special (page 4 panel 1) on the front. Variant Cover Parallels are distributed at 1 per 3 boxes, so you should expect to get one of those out of every 1,394 boxes you open.

Then there's the Silver Sparkle Parallel found in every 4 Hobby Boxes (one in 1,840) or every 5 Blasters (one in 2,301). These look a lot like the Blue Parallel but with silver foil in the background.

By now you're probably thinking that you should just buy Blasters. You only need 4 of those to have a 51% chance of a Booster Gold card and a small chance of pulling either a Blue Parallel, Variant Cover Parallel, or Silver Sparkle Parallel. But those are just the tip of the iceberg of variants. All the rest are inserted exclusively into Hobby Boxes and are much, much rarer. With only 3 rare inserts in each Hobby Box, good luck finding any of the following in the wild:

• Green Parallel (print run of 499 cards)
• Gold Linearity Parallel (print run of 88)
• Hologram Parallel (print run of 25)
• Crystal Clear Parallel (print run of 25)
• Cyan Printing Plate (one of a kind)
• Magenta Printing Plate (one of a kind)
• Yellow Printing Plate (one of a kind)
• Black Printing Plate (one of a kind)
• Cyan Hologram Printing Plate (one of a kind)
• Magenta Hologram Printing Plate (one of a kind)
• Yellow Hologram Printing Plate (one of a kind)
• Black Hologram Printing Plate (one of a kind)
• Pure Diamond Parallel (one of a kind)

But wait, there's more! If you're a real completist, you'll want to know that Booster Gold also appears on card N1S-4, which is the cover to DC All In Special #1. The most common N1S-4 card is the #1 Spot version, about as uncommon as a Silver Sparkle Parallel from the Base Set. The #1 Spot Sparkle Parallel is limited to 199, and the #1 Spot Retro Wave Parallel is limited to 25.

Gee whiz. Next time I complain about how many covers DC is printing, remind me about Upper Deck's business model.

Thanks for the lead, Joe. Happy hunting, Booster boosters.

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Earlier today, David Jenkins posted to Bluesky:

Just handed the Booster Gold pilot in. I love it. One of my favorite pilot scripts. 💙💛
bsky.app/profile/david-jenkins.bsky.social

Cool. Though it inspired a few thoughts.

If the earlier instance of Jenkins deleting his posts about working on the Booster Gold television show wasn't an indication that he was off the project, why didn't he say so at the time? And here he's saying he's just happy about the script itself (which he's clearly not contractually prevented for admitting exists). Does all this indicate behind the scenes friction with the production or the studio?

And should we read anything into the blue and gold hearts? Hmm?

Whatever. So long as it's good.

Thanks to Rob Snow for ensuring I saw this.

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Attention, die-hard Booster Gold collectors! In addition to the three (three!) comics we got on Wednesday, two other Superman comic books were added to the Boosterrific! Database this week.

The older of the two is The Superman Gallery #1. Capitalizing on the "Death of Superman" craze from 1993, this issue reprints a bunch of Superman artwork from prominent artists. Booster Gold appears by way of Todd McFarlane's "Chapter 2" splash page from Invasion! #2.

A marginally bigger deal is Booster Gold's cameo appearance in Superman Villains Secret Files #1 from 1998. Yes, it's also just one panel, but it's a unique panel suitable for a time-traveling hero as its drawn by Stuart Immonen in the style of Windsor McKay's Little Nemo in Slumberland newspaper strip from 1905!

Every time I think I know every Booster Gold comic, I find a new one — or two (or five)! Isn't comic collecting fun?

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Booster Gold's adventures continue today in Action Comics #1099. This will be the fourth entry in Mark Waid's story taking three Super Buddies (Booster Gold, Martian Manhunter, Mary Marvel) back in time to have adventures with Superman-When-He-Was-A-Boy.

My favorite part of this series is learning just how much its artists look up to Booster Gold!

Action Comics #1097 page 22

Action Comics #1098 page 2

Action Comics #1099 Cover A

I like that everyone — sorry, Manhunter — almost everyone took the time out from saving Superman's history to get haircuts. You gotta look sharp for your moment in the spotlight.

Buy this issue and make Skeets happy.

UPDATE: As you can read in the comments, pigeon and EJ have pointed out that Booster Gold (or at least a simulacrum of his costume) also appear in Justice League Dream Girls - A DC Pride Event #2 and Green Lantern Corps #17. Thanks for pointing those out!

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Shawn Baston dropped by last week's comments to alert us to a new instance of characters talking about Booster Gold behind his back. In this case, May's Green Lantern #35, it was Kyle Rayner referencing a movie playing on Booster's public reputation as the Crusader of Capitalism:

words by Jeremy Adams, art by Ig Guara

Sleazy Don Darlington strikes me as the Roger Corman-type who makes low-budget films to capitalize on existing trends, so I doubt Booster Gold himself played any part in the making of "Booster's Quadrillion," which any Booster Gold fan already invested in key events from 1985 probably recognizes as a parody of the 16th highest grossing film of that year: Brewster's Millions staring Richard Pryor and John Candy.

Of course, all time travelers know that history is cyclical. The 1985 Brewster's Millions was a remake of a film by the same name from 1945, which was a remake of a film by the same name from 1935, which was a remake of a film by the same name from 1921, which was a remake of a film by the same name from 1914, which was based on a 1906 play of the same name adapted from a 1902 book of the same name by George Barr McCutcheon.

The premise of each adaptation is that young Brewster has to spend some amount of millions of dollars in a set amount of time in order to inherit a larger amount of millions of dollars. All tallied, across the five movies telling essentially the same story (and without adjusting for inflation), Brewster has to spend about thirty-five million ($35,000,000) to earn three hundred forty-eight million ($348,000,000).

That's a lot of money, but it's no quadrillion. A quadrillion is a staggeringly large number. If Brewster earns $348 million every five movies, he'd have to make 14,367,812 more movies to make one quadrillion dollars ($1,000,000,000,000,000).

Before you get started, Brewster, a word of warning: You're going to run into a spot of bother after you've made the first 14,367 movies because by that time you will have already earned all the money in the world. So for movie 14,368, you're going to need to buy a printing press.

Of course, Booster Gold can access a quadrillion dollars because he is not limited to the present day, or really any restriction of time or space. Maybe the quadrillion he's after isn't even money but something more valuable: time. It's a good thing Booster's functionally immortal. It takes over 31,688,764 years to gather a quadrillion seconds.

The one thing Booster needs to know before he gets started is whether he needs a quadrillion units in American short scale or a quadrillion of the traditional British long scale. These days, most English-speaking countries use the short scale where a quadrillion has 15 zeroes, but a time-traveler like Booster could easily get confused since the English were counting to a quadrillion with 24 zeroes long before the United States existed. That's a difference of nine zeroes! A factor of a full billion! (Or, if you're using the long scale, a factor of one thousand million!) To put that in perspective, it would mean an additional 31,688,764,583,724,000 years of gathering seconds. Obviously, confusing the two would be a very big mistake. Better be sure, Booster.

Thanks for spotting that for us, Shawn.

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