We're less than a week away from Heroes in Crisis #6 of 9, which means we're pretty close to learning the truth behind who killed everyone at Sanctuary. It seems like a good time to talk about Booster Gold's mental health.

Clearly, Booster has been mentally struggling with fallout from his incredibly stupid actions in Batman #45. I had complained at the time that Booster's reaction to Green Lantern's graphic on-panel suicide was inappropriate — and it was — but I'm willing to concede that Tom King was trying to make a point in his own way about how the human brain reacts unpredictably to such trauma.

And how is Booster Gold reacting to that trauma? His symptoms as exhibited in Heroes in Crisis look like an aggravated case of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, which is exactly what press reports advertised King wanted to address in this series. PTSD is triggered by extreme trauma with common symptom including avoidance of repeat stimuli, willful memory loss, and hallucinations. Booster has spent most of the series hiding from just about everyone, so check one. And he claimed he couldn't remember exactly what happened, so check two. But hallucinations? Maybe those too.

As Frankie Hagan pointed out in blog comments last month, so far in Heroes in Crisis, no one seems to have noticed Blue Beetle other than Booster Gold, which certainly suggests that the Blue and Gold reunion may be all in Booster's head. I don't know what that says about Booster Gold, but if it turns out to be true, it may be even more disappointing for Booster Gold fans than if our hero turns out to be a mass murderer.

Speaking of murder, that's the real question, isn't it? Is Booster's mental illness severe enough to drive him to kill? Statistical evidence indicates that there are indeed links between PTSD and increased rates of outbursts of anger and violence. However, the odds that PTSD would unbalance a hero enough to engage in a spree killing remain remote.

Experts say that the biggest indicator of how an individual may respond to PTSD is that person's pre-trauma personality. It's true that Booster Gold has always had his own set of foibles, yet he has never killed anyone, even when given the opportunity. At heart, he's no murderer, no matter what Tom King wants to imply.

We'll find out more about Booster Gold's health when Heroes in Crisis #6 is released February 27.

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We're still a week-and-a-half away from Heroes in Crisis #5, but what appears to be its title page turned up on reddit earlier this week. Feast your eyes on this!

That's Clay Mann's art, all right. He's really quite good. In fact, he's the best thing about Heroes in Crisis.

For the record, DC, I'd buy a book of splash pages of Blue Beetle and Booster Gold hanging out eating pizza and drinking beer. Can we make that happen?

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"Blue and Gold." It's a simple phrase that means silly good times and brotherhood.

Blue Beetle and Booster Gold have been best friends since their earliest days together in the Justice League International, and fans soon took to the shorthand way to reference their unique brand of bromantic hijinks as "Blue and Gold" in letter columns and on issue covers. But when did the phrase first appear within the DC Universe itself?

That's the question that Brian Cronin, long the best part of the website now known as CBR.com, recently answered in his "When We First Met" series.

The answer: Justice League America #53, as spoken by Blue Beetle himself.

words by J. M. DeMatteis and Keith Giffen
art by Chris Wozniak, Bruce D. Patterson, Gene D'Angelo, and Willie Schubert

Actually, the article says it first appears in Justice League America #52, but I just looked into my own long boxes, and I'm certain it was #53. To be fair, the image accompanying the text is for #53, and #53 was indeed the first issue of the "Breakdowns" story as indicated. So we're going to chalk it up to an accidental typo.

Forgiveness is very "Blue and Gold."

UPDATE: Cronin has corrected his typo. Making up for your past mistakes is also very "Blue and Gold."

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Booster Gold appeared in two comics this week. The one I didn't mention on Wednesday was Old Lady Harley #3. It seems that in the future, Booster will have his own Las Vegas casino.

art by Inaki Miranda and Eva De La Cruz

(Thanks again to Logan Peterson for the spot.)

The other one was, as you are no doubt aware, was Heroes in Crisis #4. And while I have mentioned it already this week, it deserves a repeat post because of this panel alone.

art by Clay Mann and Tomeu Morey

Ah, Blue Beetle and Booster Gold. My heroes.

We still don't know what the shared history of these two is in the Rebirth DCnU. (It can't be time spent in the Justice League.) But who cares.

The friendship of Booster Gold and Blue Beetle cannot be destroyed by Maxwell Lord, Superboy punches, Doctor Manhattan ex machina or any other continuity-destroying device that DC throws at them.

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I'm not sure what to make of this Tom King tweet from Friday:

We've known since New York Comic Con back in October that King has been planning on pairing Blue and Gold for Heroes in Crisis. This tweet, presumably, is the proof that it is indeed coming. But how?

The Booster Gold in Heroes in Crisis has never been a partner of any incarnation of the Blue Beetle (so far as we know), so is their first meeting? Or a reunion of a previously unseen, shared past in the DC Rebirth Universe? Or a vision in Booster's head generated by Sanctuary?

For answers to these (and many other questions), we'll just have to keep reading future issues of Heroes in Crisis.

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