I recently saw an AI-generated piece of art depicting Chris Pratt dressed as Booster Gold. It looked impressive, but I'm not going to link to it here because I don't think it is appropriate for me to promote the AI art generators, even when they are being used to produce stellar Booster Gold fan art.

For one thing, as both an artist and coder, I have reservations about how the AI algorithms have been created. It's one thing to program them with public domain art. It's another to indiscriminately scrape images from the World Wide Web. It wouldn't be okay for a human to reproduce that work, so the same ethics should apply to computer coders.

Perhaps more importantly than the issue of attribution, I don't want to encourage AI-generated "fan" art because I don't want to aid in normalizing acceptance of computer-generated storytelling. I'd hate to think that I played any role in robbing the creators I respect of the opportunity to continue creating for profit because they can be replaced by cheaper computer programs.

On the other hand, I have to imagine that Booster Gold would be in favor of using AI art. In addition to being raised in an era with sentient robots, he has a demonstrably weak grasp on the concept of private property. If he can make a buck selling computer-generated images of himself in action, he'd totally do it.

Maybe this is just another case of how sometimes Booster Gold is a role model for what we should not do.

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Three times a week, I post something here about Booster Gold — a comic panel, a pop culture reference, fan art — whatever I can find to fill the space. But Boosterrific.com is much more than this blog. In fact, the blog is actually an afterthought, a net cast to catch more eyeballs for what this site is really all about: cataloging Booster Gold's comic book adventures.

If you look beyond the front page, you'll find many, many comics. If you like, you can find lists of those comics sorted by chronology or Booster's prominence in the story or every Booster Gold comic ever.

There are also lists of characters who have crossed Booster's path and lists of the comics they've appeared in together. (For example, Blue Beetle).

Do you have a favorite artist? Have they worked on a Booster Gold comic? There's are lists for those too, by role and individual artists. (For example, Kevin Maguire.)

There's a cover gallery, a showcase of house ads, a timeline of key events, a map of adventure locations. And, to coin a phrase, that's just scratching the surface!

In other words, Boosterrific.com is an amusement park for fans of the original Corporate Crusader. It's open 24/7, and it's free! What more could you want?

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It seems everywhere I go online in the past week, I bump into someone's opinion about whether Chris Pratt should be cast as Booster Gold in any film in new DC Studios co-CEO James Gunn's DC Extended Universe.

That should be expected, I assume. In large part thanks to his role in a Gunn movie franchise, Pratt is Hollywood's current go-to actor for action comedy, and most people assume that any live-action Booster would be a funny man of action.

You might think that I, as a Booster Gold fan, also have an opinion on whether or not Pratt should play my hero. But I don't.

This comes up every few years (see previous blog posts in 2010 and 2015). Assuming that Booster ever does make it to the big screen in my lifetime, all I really care about is seeing Booster characterized as he is the comics: a well-intentioned soul whose need for outside approval and material wealth drives him to do things that aren't necessarily so heroic.

Booster's exterior cockiness is a mask hiding his deep-seeded feelings of inadequacy, and any actor who can portray that with humor and charm is probably good enough for me. Even if that's Chris Pratt.

Booster Gold #1

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Booster booster Rob Snow has spotted Booster Gold in the AIPTComics.com preview of this week's Blue Beetle Graduation Day #3.

That is presumably one of Booster's costumes inside that glass jar and not Booster himself. The only way to know for sure is to buy this issue and makes Skeets happy.

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I very much enjoy Booster Gold #19 for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is because the Rainbow Raider is such a delightfully silly concept for a comic book super villain that Booster Gold seems completely reasonable by comparison.

Which is no small part of why I choose page 6 as my favorite in this issue.

Notice that all the panels feature diagonal layouts (mostly Dutch angles), emphasizing the uneasiness our hero feels. When the floor isn't tilting, the people on it are! His world is literally spinning out from underneath him as his self-confidence deserts him in a very public moment.

But if I'm being completely honest, the biggest reason it's my favorite page in this issue is because of that bisecting panel with the wide-eyed, costumed Rainbow Raider yelling his own name to a crowd full of witnesses — in the middle of his theft!

You're certainly one of a kind, Roy G. Bivolo.

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