This was the Boosterrific blog entry exactly one decade ago today:

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 14, 2013

Happy Birthday, Jimmy Palmiotti!

All Booster Gold fans should take the time to wish Jimmy Palmiotti a happy birthday!

Palmiotti and his writing partner, Justin Gray, are the only writers at DC who have given Booster Gold anything to do in the DCnU in 2013. Maybe if we're really nice to him on his birthday, he will arrange for Booster to return to All-Star Western where we can all find out whether Booster and Jonah Hex can work out their differences. (If we're really, really nice, maybe we can get Skeets back in the Old West, too!)

So thank you, Mr. Palmiotti. May you have many more.

A few things of note about that:

First of all, happy birthday (again), Jimmy.

Secondly, although Palmiotti and his frequent collaborator Amanda Conner are now long-associated with Harley Quinn, their first Harley book hadn't even come out yet when I originally posted that! How many Harley Qunn series have there been in the past decade? Geez.

And third, I find it very interesting that exactly 10 years later, Booster has hit another extended dry spell between published adventures (with only the briefest of respites in last week's issue of, of all things, a Harley Quinn book). What's that they say about history repeating itself?

Comments (0) | Add a Comment | Tags: birthday jimmy palmiotti rerun

I've sliced my thumb rather badly on a food processor — while putting it away, no less; it wasn't even running! So posting might be a little light for the next week. Sorry about that.

Justice League Task Force #13, 1994

I'll try to be more careful next time.

Comments (4) | Add a Comment | Tags: blue beetle injury justice league task force website update

Dan Jurgens created the character of Booster Gold and has written and drawn most of Booster's adventures since 1985. However, Dan wasn't the only artist working on Booster's first appearance.

I would suggest that the most significant early artistic collaborator was Booster's original inker, Mike DeCarlo, who has drawn, inked, and/or colored hundreds of books for DC (and elsewhere) since the early 80s.

For those of us who have been with Booster since the beginning, DeCarlo's Booster certainly has a place in our heart. That's why I was so happy to see Cameron Lentz's commission of DeCarlo's distinctive take on young Booster Gold recently show up at ComicArtFans.com:

Yep, that's our Booster!

If you'd like to admire more of DeCarlo's Booster Gold inks, ComicArtFans.com also has the first appearance of the post-Crisis Superman from Booster Gold #6 story page 7, as well as Booster's origin story on pages 17, 18, 19, and 20 of that same issue.

With art like that, it's no wonder that we consider the issue to be one of the 12 Best Booster Gold Stories Ever!

Comments (1) | Add a Comment | Tags: cameron lentz comicartfans.com commission dan jurgens inkers mike decarlo superman

The full title of the comic containing this week's^† long-awaited return of Booster Gold is Multiversity: Harley Screws Up the DCU #6. Note the "Multiversity" there.

To date, since 2014, DC has released 10 distinctly different "Multiversity" titles. The first nine of them identified on their covers which of the near-infinite Earths they took place on. The exception? This one, obviously.

So is the Booster Gold who appears in this issue "our" Booster Gold, the Booster Gold of Earth Prime or New Earth or Earth 0 or whatever they're calling it this month?

Sure. Why not? Does it really matter so long as we get some Booster Gold action?

Buy this issue and make Skeets happy.

^† This is the week the book appears in print for the first time. The book has been available as a digital edition to subscribers to the DC Universe Infinite app for the past month. Membership has its privileges, as they say.

Comments (2) | Add a Comment | Tags: harley quinn multiversity

DC's 1988 event Millennium is not widely beloved for a variety of reasons — foremost among them for all Booster boosters is that it got Booster Gold cancelled. But what sealed its fate is that it doesn't stick the landing.

The concluding issue, Millennium #8, is 24 pages of just talking and new character introductions. It doesn't feel as much like a denouement for what came before as it does the first issue in a brand new comic book populated by a bunch of badly stereotyped characters with poorly thought-out powers. Blech.

Booster appears in several panels in this turkey, and he's featured equally as prominently as Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman. Which is to say that they are all extras in the story of future household names Gloss, RAM, Extrano, Jet, Floro, and... Betty.

As it happens, I do have a favorite page in this issue. It's page 5, in which Booster Gold learns that everything he's gone through in the previous seven weeks — losing his fortune, his friends, and his good name — was leading to the creation of a superhuman with the power to arrange furniture for maximum harmony!

I have to believe that when Gloss says "You'll never regret this," she's being sarcastic.

Comments (3) | Add a Comment | Tags: favorite pages millennium