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.

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Booster booster Marty directed me to this image on The App That Used To Be Twitter:

The whatever-it-is that-we're-calling-tweets-now implies that cocktail menu comes from "the #BlueBeetle after party", whatever that was. As you can (barely) see at the bottom of the list, there's a drink there named for Ted Kord's best buddy, Booster Gold.

The ingredients read "Mezcal, Ancho Piña Shrub, Grapefruit, Lime, Close Honey, Angostura." Full disclosure here: I'm an absolute teetotaler. I haven't had an alcoholic beverage since the Olympic Games were held in Atlanta, Georgia. (It was a Tom Collins.) So my working knowledge of cocktails is a little rusty, and I have no idea what that tastes like, much less what some of those ingredients even are.

But my Google skills are strong. Allowing for typos — "close" should be "clove" — and a brand-sponsored tequila substitution, it seems those ingredients combine to make what Difford's Guide calls a Mercado Roma and The Educated Barfly calls an Oaxacanite. Here's a picture of a good-looking presentation of those drinks on Instagram:

It's certainly the right color.

As for whether this hints at any role Booster might play in the movie... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ . I guess we'll find out when the film hits theaters on August 18.

Thanks for the drink, Marty.

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And so at last we reach the end of Booster Gold Volume 1. It is, without a doubt, the ugliest of all 25 original issues.

Robert Campanella's inks are not a good fit for Dan Jurgens' pencils, and even most of Jurgens' layouts are subpar. Either this issue was rushed through editorial to fit the aggressive Millennium publishing schedule, or all the visual artists involved were in a hurry to move on to greener pastures. Maybe both.

(In my opinion, this issue is the only one in volume one that I think looks definitively superior in the often careless recolored digital reprints over the original newsprint publication.)

It's really a shame about the art, because the Dan Jurgens' script deserves better. It hits all the right notes as it forces Booster to face the down-side of publicity (in an American fast food restaurant) with a Communist providing outside perspective.

It also cleverly draws in the Justice League characters Booster is closest to while setting our hero up for a triumphant come-back in the future. Both of those latter elements factor into my favorite page of Booster Gold #25 (especially Beetle's lecture in panel 2):

Yeah! What Beetle said!

That's what I like so much about Booster Gold. His path meanders, but he always gets to the right place in the end.

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Ok, so over the weekend, while trying to fix one malingering back-end code problem here at Boosterrific.com (stupid, stupid spam filters), I discovered that another of my recent-ish changes had resulted in a bunch of bad internal links. Specifically, following links on a character's list of shared Booster Gold appearances could take you to the bio of an entirely different character. Oops.

Now, I think I've got both problems are fixed. Going forward, if you do click an internal link here on Boosterrific.com and it doesn't take you where you think it was supposed to take you — for example, if a link promising Harley Quinn takes you instead to *ahem* the Sea Devils — please do me a favor and drop me a note, either in a blog post comment or via the Boosterrific Contact form so that I can fix it. Thank you for your help in making Boosterrific better.

And just so you don't leave this post thinking that Boosterrific.com has nothing to offer today other than malfunctioning code and hijacked links, here's a seasonally appropriate piece of delightful Blue and Gold fan art by Melonnabar (from Tumblr via Reddit):

It tickles me that they wear bathing suits that give away their secret identities. Very subtle, boys.

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AIPTcomics.com has all of DC's solicitations for September, and oh, boy, they look great.

I've had my eye out for Blue Beetle #1 ever since DC.com revealed back in April that Ted Kord (and the Bug!) would be on the Adrian Gutierrez cover.

I've also been anticipating Fire & Ice: Welcome to Smallville #1 for months, and although I don't like incentive variants, I just might be convinced to pony up for this 1:25 Kevin Maguire variant cover.

I hadn't been planning on buying any of the four monthly books written by Tom King, but Julian Totino Tedesco makes riding a kanga look like so much fun on the variant cover for Wonder Woman #1, I just might change my mind. (It wouldn't be the first time I'd've bought a comic just because of a Tedesco cover.)

Ooh! And how about the Chris Samnee variant for Shazam #3? Or the two part Mikel Janin acetate cover for Superman #6? And don't even get me started on the Old Man Red Bee (and Old Man Blackhawk!) appearing on the 1:25 Rahazzah variant for Peacemaker Tries Hard! #5.

Now, if you've read down this far, you might have noticed that I haven't mentioned Booster Gold yet. Well, that's because the solicitation doesn't either. I was trying to soften the blow with all those great covers.

Did it work?

If it helps, DC also announced that the first six issues of The Human Target will be collected (for the second time) in October. Booster will be in that. Come to think if it, it's also got some great covers.

Booster may be hard to find these days, but at least it isn't hurting my eyes to keep looking.

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