The readers have spoken, and you've said that you liked things the way they were.

Last week's poll question: What day of the week do you want me to tell you that DCEASED: Dead Planet #1 and Harley Quinn #74 have been released? (26 votes)

I get it. It seems that everything about 2020 has been so outside the norm, maintaining a little tradition of what came before can certainly be comforting. Therefore, I won't remind you about DCEASED: Dead Planet #1 and Harley Quinn #74 until Wednesday.

See you then.

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What makes a hero super? The super powers! From awesome strength to zero-to-sixty speed, great superpowers are the most useful tricks in every famous costumed crime-fighter's tool kit. Michael Jon Carter knew this, and that's why he started his career with high-tech goggles.

Energy blasts, impenetrable force fields, flight: Booster Gold's best known powers are also the ones that show up the best on action-oriented comic book panels. But Booster's arsenal contains more than just power gauntlets and powered tights. He's also got a fancy pair of glasses which, while less flashy, can be just as useful.

Booster's goggles have been a part of his costume from the very beginning. Using components he stole from the Space Museum in the 25th century, Booster and Skeets integrated the goggles into the hood of his power-suit and fueled them with the same "little power rods" that supplied energy to his other technological abilities, as detailed in Booster's very first chronicled adventure detailed in Booster Gold volume 1 #8.

Though their technology isn't traceable to any particular hero or villain, their powers were clearly inspired by the incredible range of abilities of a certain Man of Tomorrow's Kryptonian eyes.

Booster has used the goggles' infrared filters to help him defeat the mad bomber Mister Twister in Booster Gold #5 (1986) and infiltrate the 1000's waterfront stronghold in Booster Gold #12 (1987). The magnifying ability came in handy when the Justice League needed to find a weak point in the otherwise indestructible hull of the alien Klaarsh spaceship in Justice League Quarterly #7 (1992), and the telescopic function was useful when traveling into the Old West to help Jonah Hex bring the warped Hootkins Gang to justice in All-Star Western #20 (2013).

Super strength is great if you want to break through walls, but a hero always knows which walls can be broken safely. Knowledge is real power, and nothing is better at gathering information than high-tech magnifying infrared goggles, just like the pair Booster Gold wears.

If you'd like to read about other powers in Booster Gold's arsenal, check out previous spotlight posts on his Force Field Belt, Booster Shots, and Flight Ring.

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For years now — over a decade, in fact — the priority for Wednesday Boosterrific Blog posts has been whatever new comic was released that day that included a Booster Gold appearance. But 2020 is changing everything. Booster Gold isn't appearing in any new DC comic today because there are no new DC comics being released today.

As all comics buyers must know by now, DC Comics is no longer being distributed by Diamond Comics Distributors as of today, July 1. While Diamond mandated the release of comics on Wednesdays (for logistical purposes), DC is rolling back to Tuesdays (as it used to be before Diamond gained dominance in the 90s). I can't say that I really care about this one way or another other than the fact that I'm suddenly unsure when I should post "new release" alerts.

Some of you may recall that for the first 6 years of this blog, I posted 5 days a week. If that were still the case, I'd just move "new releases" from Wednesdays to Tuesdays. But I stopped posting 5-days-a-week because, frankly, there's just not that much new to say about a character DC has rarely chosen to spotlight positively in the New 52 era. I've been very happy posting three days a week and would like to continue that pace, if I can make a schedule work that doesn't alienate readers.

Should I maintain the Monday/Wednesday/Friday schedule and post about new comics on Monday instead of Wednesday? Or should I change the three days I post to include a Tuesday (probably a Tuesday/Thursday/Saturday posting schedule) so that I can keep you informed of day and date releases? Or, should I just keep posting new releases on Wednesday, since that's when Diamond will keep releasing books and you might as well make one trip for everything?

This week's poll question: What day of the week do you want me to tell you that DCEASED: Dead Planet #1 and Harley Quinn #74 have been released? Please visit the Boosterrific Polls page to view results for this week's poll.

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Booster booster Eskana dropped me this note last week:

I don't know if you've seen these yet, but the Comicstorian channel on YouTube has been posting videos that contain some major Booster Gold. The host, Benny, has been holding "Dungeons & Dragons"-style role-playing games for the DC universe, and in each one the two guests are playing as the characters of Booster Gold and Blue Beetle (Ted.) I've never played D&D, but the videos are pretty entertaining as the guests do a pretty good job of acting out their roles as Ted and Booster. The episodes seem to feature the two working with the new Blue Wally West to fix anomalies in time and the multiverse, so you see them acting out storylines such as DCeased.

I'm not a frequent consumer of YouTube videos, but I have played my share of D&D. More than my share, if the truth were known. (Full disclosure, an rpg campaign I ran in 2001 is the basis for a series of novels I wrote in 2016. *plug, plug*)

These guys at Comicstorian seem to know what they're doing, and, more importantly, they're obviously having a pretty good time role-playing as our favorite heroes. Given the current health crisis, a podcasting video might be as close as many of us will get to a real gaming session in the near future.

If you're interested in such things, you can find the video at YouTube.com.

Thanks for the link, Eskana.

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Not so long ago, Booster booster Fin called my attention to a comic I had long overlooked. It wasn't a missed Booster Gold appearance. Not quite, anyway.

Just see if this banter doesn't sound familiar:

art by David Williams and Kelsey Shannon

Those panels are from The Authority: The Lost Year, a series in which the Authority bounced from one alternate universe to another. (This was back in 2010, before the New 52 folded the Wildstorm Universe into the mainstream DCnU.)

Issues #8 and #9 were written by Grant Morrison, Keith Giffen, and J.M. DeMatteis and featured an alternate universe in which the local Authority looked and acted a lot like a particular, best-selling DC Comics team of the late 1980s.

The meta-textural take on the Justice League International by the JLI's original writing team is delightful, especially as contrasted with the modern, no-nonsense Authority concept (itself strongly reminiscent of the extreme 1990s love affair with "mature" sex and violence content).

As you can see, that's Blue Beetle in the role of the Authority's Midnighter (a Batman-like vigilante) and Booster Gold as Apollo (whose character is a riff on Superman — so fitting!) In their original continuity, Apollo and Midnighter are a homosexual couple, allowing the issue's writers to directly tackle the longstanding Boostle phenomenon 'shipping Blue and Gold into a romantic relationship.

I'm sorry I hadn't realized this book existed sooner. Thanks, Fin.

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