In 1985, DC Comics decided that their continuity had become so complex and discouraging to new readers that they had a Crisis on Infinite Earths to scrap everything and start over. DC has spent the past few decades rolling that back, but I'm starting to think that they had a point. Case in point:

Per Booster booster Jade Knight:

Our guy's really on a roll right now. One of the most recent episodes of Teen Titans Go! sees him on an assembly line being forced to lay eggs alongside his pal Ted Kord and other members of the DCU (S9 E8: "Teen Titans and the Easter Factory"). Yes, you heard that right.

I'm not a regular Cartoon Network Teen Titans Go! viewer, but watching the episode to grab that screenshot made it clear that the cartoon Teen Titans had some serious backstory with the Easter Bunny. So I looked it up on teen-titans-go.fandom.com.

The Easter Bunny was introduced in season 3 ("The Teen Titans Go! Easter Holiday Classic") as a captive of a rogue Santa Claus plotting to take over all the holidays. The Titans were repulsed by the Easter Bunny's half-man, half-rabbit appearance and especially the fact that a half-man/half-rabbit lays eggs. Despite their misgivings, the team still aided him again in season 4 ("Easter Creeps") to save Easter from the Tooth Fairy. In season 5 ("Booty Eggs"), the Titans decide the Easter Bunny is too creepy to tolerate any longer and work to replace him themselves. (When you think about it, this pretty much the same plan as hatched by Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy in the earlier episodes, but Teen Titans Go! episodes are better when you don't think too much.) The Titans are forced to realize they aren't cut out to run Easter and cede oversight back to the Easter Bunny.

In season 7, the pattern repeats itself when the Titans have to help the Easter Bunny defend Easter from Marshmallow Ducky ("Feed Me"), and Beast Boy foils Santa Claus's latest attempt to take over all holidays from the Godfather-inspired Holiday Mob ("A Holiday Story").

In season 8 ("Easter Annihilation"), inspired by Aliens, the Easter Bunny finally becomes a fully fledged supervillain when he decides that every day should be Easter. His plan? "Since Easter is based on the lunar calendar, I'm going turn the moon into an Easter Egg so every day will be Easter!" (Like I said, don't think about it.)

Anyway, all that history informs the latest Easter Bunny episode in which the Easter Bunny's latest plan for world domination is to impersonate Willy Wonka's famous chocolate factory and capture all the heroes and villains of the DCU to lay eggs until there are enough for everyone in the world. (Don't. Think.)

I think I'll have a crisis myself if I have to watch any more Teen Titans Go! Easter episodes.

Thanks to Jade Knight for keeping us informed.

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Justice League Task Force #37 (1996)

The gang looks happier every year!

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It has become an annual tradition for the President of the United States to "pardon" a turkey for Thanksgiving. Technically, a pardon is a legal forgiveness for having committing a crime, so the word really shouldn't apply to turkeys. We should say that they were granted clemency because they didn't do anything illegal prior to the imposition of their death sentence.

But what if they did?

Although Abraham Lincoln often gets the credit, the truth is that in November 1963, John Kennedy was the first president to pardon an unnamed turkey. "The turkey will probably live a long and happy life as a result of his presidential pardon," reported the Associated Press. Only, as we now know, it didn't.

As it turns out, The Turkey With No Name would soon be given a name: Patient Zero. After the turkey returned to its home in California, it was discovered the turkey was a carrier of the virus then known as "fowl plague." Today we recognize it as influenza A, more commonly called bird flu.

Bird flu is highly contagious and has been responsible for crossing species and killing millions of human beings around the world. In 1963, there was no treatment for the disease, and the only way to prevent the spread was to take swift and decisive action and cull entire flocks of birds... and anyone else who had contact with the infected fowl, including the popular President of the United States. (To prevent public panic over a potential pandemic, such extreme actions were undertaken surreptitiously with suspicion cast on convenient scapegoats.)

Any well-intentioned time travelers aware of this terrible and sordid chain of events might be tempted to take it upon themselves to "improve" history by going back in time and killing the turkey before it could trigger such a tragic spiral. However, as we all know, changing history can have dire unintended consequences. Ensuring that history plays out the way it must is the lonely but necessary job of a Time Cop, preferably one with a force field impenetrable to disease.

Thanks for performing your thankless job, Booster Gold!

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Yeah, yeah, DC's 'Twas the Mite Before Christmas has finally given us a Booster Gold in a full Santa suit.

But for my money, the best (and most extreme) Booster Gold Christmas panel is still this one:

Justice League Task Force #37 (1996)

What can I say? I just prefer a classic Christmas.

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It could be argued that self-interested corporate shill Booster Gold is the embodiment of the modern American Dream. But the DC Universe already has an embodiment of the American Spirit, and he's been around for a long, long time.

"In 1776, as a new, but tattered flag was hoisted over the thirteen free states, a new spirit was born, a spirit that grew until 48 states became united under one flag."

That's how National Comics #1 opened in 1940, thus beginning the comic book adventures of the personification of the American Spirit of Liberty, better known to comic book readers as Uncle Sam, eventual leader of the Freedom Fighters, first on Earth-X, then on the post-Crisis on Infinite Earths's only Earth, and now on Earth-10.

You might think that Booster and Uncles Sam, both being active, time-traveling, metaverse-hopping superheroes for decades now, would have worked together a bunch. But that's actually far from the case. As it happens, they've appeared on panel together in only two adventures.

The first time was in 2007's Tales of the Sinestro Corps: Superman-Prime, when the heroes of Earth came together in an attempt to put the rampaging Superman of Earth-Prime in his proper place: six-feet underground.

Tales of the Sinestro Corps: Superman-Prime #1, Page 4, Panel 1

The second time was a few year later, in the pages of Blackest Night #8, when the heroes of Earth came together in an attempt to put the rampaging Nekron in his proper place: also six-feet underground.

Blackest Night #8, Page 10, Panel 1

As you can imagine, there's not a lot of time for small talk when you're trying to save the world.

I like to think that once the smoke cleared, the two heroes got a chance to share a Coca-Cola and a slice of apple pie and argue about baseball. One might love money while the other loves freedom, but something tells me they have more in common than they have differences.

Blackest Night #8, Page 33, Panel 6

Happy Independence Day, everybody.

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