Booster Gold was in Year of the Villain: Hell Arisen #2 and #3, so it seemed pretty likely he'd be in the final issue of the mini-series released today, even if the announcement solicitation wasn't explicit.

YEAR OF THE VILLAIN: HELL ARISEN #4
written by JAMES TYNION IV
art and cover by STEVE EPTING
This is it! Lex Luthor has gathered a strike force of villains he's leveled up to be the baddest bad guys around-Captain Cold, Oracle, Solomon Grundy, Black Manta, and Lobo, each and every one a recipient of one of Lex's dark gifts.

But the Batman Who Laughs has his own army of infected heroes. Six hundred sixty-six of them, all transformed into their worst selves.

It's a final showdown between two of DC's most iconic villains, all to curry the favor of Perpetua. Whoever wins will take over the Multiverse alongside her. Does Lex ascend, or does he get laid low? Does the Batman Who Laughs finally remake the DC Universe in his own image? Either way, life for our heroes will never be the same.

Sure, would-be heroes are a dime a dozen in the DC Universe, but six hundred and sixty-six of them? That's got to be, like, everyone. I'm not sure I'm ready for Evil G'nort.

Anyway, we don't have to guess whether or not Booster is in issue #4 because CBR.com has a preview, and...

...yup, that's Booster Gold, all right.

Assuming your Local Comic Shop isn't closed by your local government, brave a plague to buy this issue and makes Skeets happy! (And enjoy it, because Booster doesn't look to appear anywhere in the June solicitations, which you can find now on Newsarama.com.)

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You all know Cort, who has graciously shared his Booster Gold commissions with us. Well, Cort doesn't just get Booster Gold sketches from professionals. He also gets them from his friends. Check 'em out:

DNR_L (Twitter)

Laowrart (Twitter)

nerdmurder (Twitter)

mangonisium (Instagram)

Cort Carpenter (Twitter)

Thanks for sharing, Cort. You've got some pretty talented friends. (Dare I say they all look Boosterrific? I dare!)

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You may have heard that there's something of a global health crisis ongoing right now. As someone with older parents, I find it a little scary, which makes it a fitting topic for Friday the 13th. What would make me feel better is a super hero who could stop a spreading disease dead in its tracks.

Which brings me to that time that Booster Gold single-handedly prevented a disease outbreak (with a little help from Skeets).

Of course, when pandemics strike the DC Universe, there's usually some super villain at work. That was definitely the case in the story "Dream of Terror" published in Booster Gold #17 (1987).

Dr. Pete Babich is biologist and eugenicist obsessed with solving the problems of social inequality. Like so many bad guys, Babich considers himself a hero who believes that he alone has "the courage to do what must be done." Specifically, he means releasing a virulent, globe-spanning disease that will kill everyone he considers to be "undesirable," by which he means "poor."

To initiate his class warfare, he enlists the help of the Teen Titan Hawk. Babich has misled Hawk into thinking that the disease won't kill outright, but will instead sterilize the population. For some reason, Hawk still thinks this is a good idea.

Babich's initial target? Mexicans. He might have gotten away with it, too, if the Russians hadn't gotten involved via their agent, the mercenary Cheshire. (This is an American comic, remember? With us, it's always Mexicans and Russians.)

Because of the Russians' attempt to steal Babich's creation to use for their own purposes, the evil doctor is exposed to his own disease. It works as advertised, destroying a certain undesirable human in a scene delightfully dripping with dramatic irony.

It would be tragedy if Babich's engineered plague went on to kill hundreds or thousands worldwide, but this being a comic book, that's not going to happen. Especially not with Booster Gold on the scene.

Everyone lives happily ever after!

I certainly don't mean to suggest that COVID-19 is the work of a super villain (or the Russians). I just find reassurance in stories about good, powerful people putting their own lives on the line to save us. In the DC Universe, they're called super heroes. In the real world, we call them health care professionals.

Stay safe, everybody. (Personally, I'll be spending the foreseeable future indoors reading comics, so it's not all bad.)

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Did you miss out on Year of the Villain: Hell Arisen #3 two weeks ago? You could buy a copy on eBay for $40, or, if you're lucky, you can find a rushed second printing today at your LCS for $3.99.

Sigh. (Seriously, I've been collecting comics for four decades, and I still marvel at how the speculator market works.)

While we're on the topic of speculating, I guess now's as good a time as any to mention that pop culture site wegotthiscovered.com reports... well, I'll let them say it.

Warner Brothers is looking to bring [Ryan] Reynolds back to DC but not as the Green Lantern. Instead, they want him to play Booster Gold.

Ok, sure. I'd buy a ticket to see Reynolds bring Zack Stentz's 2017 still-unproduced Booster Gold: The Movie script to life. But then, I'd buy a ticket to see Rob Schneider play Booster Gold. I'm not a hard sell in the Booster Gold department.

And now that I'm on the topics of actors, I should probably take the opportunity to mention what card -carrying Booster Brigade member Shawn Baston spotted in a youtube video tour of comedian Pete Davidson's apartment given to Netflix. Feast your eyes on this:

No, not the picture of Davidson's grandfather with Judd Apatow. Over there in the corner.

Yep, that's a copy of 1985's first printing of Booster Gold volume 1 #1. You've got good taste, Pete. That issue sells for upwards of $30 on eBay!

Double sigh.

UPDATE 2020-03-18: wegotthiscovered.com now reports that Reynolds has turned down the role. That means I've mentioned them twice in this post, which shows you how much mileage there is in speculating about such things.

UPDATE 2020-03-19: wegotthiscovered.com updates their own reporting to say that since Ryan Reynolds passed, WB now wants Chris Pratt. So, they're determined to poach all the Marvel actors then. I guess next week they'll be after Tom Holland.

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If you've been reading recent issues of Harley Quinn, you may have noticed that the relationship between the title character and her recurring guest star, Booster Gold, is not what you might have expected from a pair who this time last year were trying to kill one another.

Some of us readers might call that bad writing. Others might say that people forced into dysfunctional relationships have been known to form traumatically bonded pairs. Still others are so happy to see their heroes in a relationship that they'll ignore all that went before. That's more or less the tact that Brandon Zachary takes in his article "Harley Quinn's New Love Interest Could Be... a Justice League Hero?!" for CBR.com.

Booster Gold is far from the worse candidate, especially given their shared sense of humor, similar optimistic personality, and mutual attempts to move past trauma. While Harley has long conquered much of the trauma in her life, she's suffered more of it in the recent events in her life. Booster has been through his fair share of problems too, and the two can probably be helpful to one another as they try to sort their emotions out. Booster also proves to at least be trying to be more empathetic, immediately apologizing when Harley reveals the full extent of what's been happening in her life. The fact that they met during the tragic circumstances of Heroes in Crisis but ended up able to work together proves they're at least somewhat compatible.

Counterpoint: They didn't "work together" in Heroes in Crisis so much as they just sort of succeeded in not being killed themselves.

That said, who am I to judge? Harley Quinn #71 writer Sam Humphries' interpretation of the characters isn't any worse than Tom King's take on the pair in Heroes in Crisis. (No take can be worse than that.) If Humphries decides he wants Booster and Harley to couple up — a sentiment that even Zachary admits isn't explicit yet — so be it.

But I have to warn you, I've heard that relationships based on intense experiences never work.

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