I do not yet own a copy of yesterday's Dark Nights: Death Metal: The Last 52: War of the Multiverses #1, not because I couldn't make it to my Local Comic Shop but because they were shorted the issue in their weekly comic shipment. New distributor, same old problems. What a fitting way to end 2020.

Actually, that's not entirely true. (The part about the issue's availability, not 2020 sucking. 2020 objectively sucked.) My LCS did have 1 copy of the issue: the 1:25 variant Gary Frank cover. It looks great, but I'm not going to pay $40 for a comic in which Booster only appears on the cover. (Well, *maybe* if Dan Jurgens drew it....)

Yes, that's right: Booster appears on both the standard and retailer incentive variant covers of the issue without showing up on any pages inside. Has this happened before? I suppose I should be the one to know; According to the Boosterrific.com database, the answer is no. It figures that it would finally happen on a squarebound book with a $8.99 cover price. Another nice twist of the knife from 2020 on the way out the door. At least I still have my health.

While we're on the subject of books that Booster Gold doesn't appear in, I wouldn't be doing my duty as chronicler of all things Booster Gold if I didn't draw your attention to this sequence from pages 12 and 13 of this week's (surprisingly enjoyable) Jinny Hex Special #1:

words by Magdalene Visaggio, art by Gleb Menikov, Luis Guerrero, Gabriela Downie

No respect!

(It was not lost on me that in the story, Jinny "descendant of Jonah" Hex finds herself involved in shenanigans with a foe whose origins lie in the Old West. Booster Gold might have been the right ally to summon after all!)

Here's hoping we *all* have better luck next year, Booster boosters.

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Today marks the negative 422nd birthday of Jon Michael "Booster" Carter, born this day in the year 2442.

Booster Gold cake by Annette Price

Congratulations, Booster! You can celebrate by picking up a copy of Dark Nights: Death Metal: The Last 52: War of the Multiverses #1 at your Local Comic Shop. The issue has two covers, and Booster is on both!

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So begins the first super-team team-up in the career of Booster Gold in 1986.

Sure, he'd fought alongside the Legion of Super-Heroes in Booster Gold #8 and #9, but he wasn't technically going by "Booster Gold" at the time. And he wouldn't join the Justice League International for another half-a-year.

As you can see, Booster had been called in by Magenta as backup for the Teen Titans in their struggle against Brother Blood. The 4-part storyline ran from New Teen Titans #28 through #31, all of which are collected in today's New Teen Titans Volume 12 reprint collection.

Though the stakes were high and many heroes were involved in the fight, Booster played but a small part in only a few panels in the middle two issues, #29 (above) and #30:

And that's that. Booster goes off to defend Washington D.C. and is not seen again for the rest of the story. At least we know he succeeded. Thanks to Booster Gold, Washington D.C. is still around today.

It may not be a glamourous job, but somebody's got to do it.

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The Greatest Hero The World Has Never Heard Of makes his triumphant return to the world of Dark Nights: Death Metal with this week's issue 6.

If you've got a really high definition monitor and a magnifying glass, you might have spotted our hero in the background of a panel in the issue preview available online at CBR.com, but Booster gets to play a bigger part later in the issue: He delivers a whole line of dialog!

But that's not the only place you'll see Booster this week. He also gets a cameo on the first page of Tales from the Dark Multiverse: Crisis on Infinite Earths (which should really be called Tales from the Dark Multiverse: Last Days of the Justice Society, but I digress). You can see Booster in CBR.com's preview of *that* issue.

(Oops. That panel might be something of a spoiler for last year's Tales from the Dark Multiverse: Infinite Crisis, if you haven't read that — and I don't blame you if you haven't. These What If? Dark Multiverse one-shots are starting to stack up. How many unhappy endings does one company need?)

And lest you think that you'd have to pick up one of these two issues to get a Booster Gold cameo appearance this week, think again. Booster is appearing in all the DC books this week in the house ad for Generations: Shattered #1. Here's the important bit:

(click the image above to link to the full ad)

That's a lot of Gold!

Buy any book from DC this week and make Skeets happy.

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When DC released the solicitation for today's DC's Very Merry Multiverse holiday anthology back in September, they completely failed to tell us that it contains a story featuring the greatest restaurant manager the world has never known!

"Twas the Night" is a short story taking place in the Planet Krypton restaurant of the Kingdom Come continuity of Earth-22 which is not to be confused with the Planet Krypton restaurant of the mainstream DCU as seen in The Kingdom. (And they say comic books are too convoluted. Pshaw!)

The 8-page story was written by Brittany Holzherr, the associate editor for both "The Gift" and Heroes in Crisis. My opinions of those stories are well known, but I'm not holding them against Holzherr, who seems to have learned all the right lessons: once again she's working with some great artists in Todd Nauck, Hi-Fi, Andworld Designs!

There's a preview of the anthology's first story (Harley Quinn in "It's a Horrible Life") online at CBR.com, but do yourself a favor and just buy this very Boosterrific issue anyway. You'll make Skeets — and yourself — merry indeed.

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