Released on July 15, 2009: Blackest Night #1.

Blackest Night is a story about heroes coming back from the dead, but it would take the "rebirth" of the entire DCU (in 2016's appropriately named DC Universe Rebirth #1) to actually bring Ted Kord back to life.

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If there's one thing that Booster Gold loves, it's stealing time machines from Rip Hunter.

On this date in 1990, Booster Gold makes a 2-page cameo appearance in Time Masters #4 just so that he can help Animal Man get his hands on one of Hunter's prototypes.

To be fair to Booster, he didn't actually know he was stealing this one. Animal Man lied about reimbursing Rip from Justice League coffers for the totally understandable personal reason that he wanted to travel back in time to save his family from being murdered. Who wouldn't do the same? (For more details on how that goes, read Animal Man #22. Spoilers: not well.)

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I've updated the pictures and links, but the text in the following post originally ran ten years ago today, on January 29, 2014. So it's a double throwback! (Will I run it again in 2034? Stick around, and we'll find out together.)

Do you remember January, 1991? The New York Giants won Super Bowl XXV. Operation Desert Storm began. Vanilla Ice won Favorite New Hip Hop Artist at the American Music Awards. Ah, those were good times. Unless you were Booster Gold.

On this date in 1991, Booster Gold was hunted by the Linear Man, the first of what would come to be recognized as the policemen of history in the DC Universe. Desperate to make Booster pay for his crime of stealing a time machine and returning to the past, the original Linear Man kidnapped and tortured Skeets. Bad cop!

Fortunately for Booster, this attack took place in The Adventures of Superman #476 — that's not a typo, kids: back in the day books kept consecutive numbering for years instead of resetting every few months — so of course Superman got involved and was displaced in time instead of our hero.

The story played out in the "Time and Time Again" storyline over the following month, but Booster Gold had already been rescued by Superman and was too busy leading the Conglomerate and watching Tonya Harding win the U.S. Figure Skating Championships to return the favor. Oh, Booster!

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As a general rule for this series, I'm going to try to steer away from full-page panels. But sometimes they're just too good to ignore.

Like this page from Booster Gold volume 1, number 8, depicting the very first flight of Booster Gold in costume:

This selection will come as no surprise to longtime Boosterrific.com boosters, as it was the panel selected to be basis of the imagemap for this site's original homepage in June 2007:

What a long, strange trip it's been, eh, Booster?

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In ancient times, May Day was a celebration of the dawning of a new season from the old, a rebirth. In the 20th century, "mayday" became a distress call for pilots.

Both of those etymologies are reflected in CRB.com's latest Booster Gold-centric clickbait, "Every Terrible DC Timeline Booster Gold Has Prevented (or Caused)" by Brandon Zachary.

As one of DC's resident time-travelers, it makes sense that Booster Gold has left an outsized impact on the DC Universe timeline over the years. While he's done some of this to protect the timeline from the influence of others, he's also sometimes done this to try and suit his own goals.

That's a fair point. Booster Gold isn't perfect, and that's a key part of why we like him.

Before you click on over to CBR, know that the article title isn't entirely accurate (surprise!). Zachary covers some of the larger (and worst) changes that Booster has made to history, but there are plenty of other terrible timelines that Booster prevented but didn't cause (like saving the multiverse from the likes of Mister Mind in 52 and Starro in Booster Gold #13, just to name a few).

And, of course, no list of the worst timelines that Booster both caused and prevented would be complete without the time he killed a little girl's dog, as seen in Booster Gold #31.

In a multiverse with an infinite number of terrible timelines, a time cop's job is never done.

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