When I arrived at my Local Comic Shop yesterday, the manager greeted me at the door and asked if I wanted a copy of DC's Free Comic Book Day offering, Absolute Power.

See, I had intentionally skipped Free Comic Book Day festivities on Saturday because A) I already buy plenty (read: too many) of comics so I always feel like I should let the "free" (to customers) comics do as they are intended and entice non-regular customers into the store ("the first one is free" they say with a smile), and B) I don't like crowds.

It's not uncommon for the manager to ask whether I want to pick up a "hot" new book, and I gave him my usual answer, "No, not unless Booster Gold is in it."

To which my LCS manager responded, "I have no idea whether he is or not. I didn't get a chance to read any of the Free Comic Book Day books yet." Which I interpreted to mean that the Free Comic Book Day books did their job. Which is great. Comic books need readers!

Anyway, long story short, Booster Gold is definitely not in what is officially titled Absolute Power 2024 FCBD Special Edition 1. To the best of my knowledge, the only comic you'll find Booster Gold in this week is the updated re-release of the 52 Volume 1 reprint collection. It might not be free, but it is very good. And that's about the best you can hope for fifty-one weeks out of the year.

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Booster Gold does not appear in this week's DC's Spring Breakout! one-shot, but that's apparently only because he was too anxious to hit the waves.

This is the first panel of the fourth page in the anthology's fourth story, "The Day the Robot Danced":

words by James Reid, letters by Josh Reed

Hmm. A signed surfboard would be hard to frame and hang on the wall in my office, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't like to try.

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Believe it or not, the first issue of Booster Gold Volume 2 was published over 16 years ago. Sixteen! If it was a person, it could legally drive a car by now.

(Wait a second. Boosterrific.com was around then. We used to discuss new issues in the now-defunct Boosterrific Forum. Have I really been doing this that long? Golly, how does Booster keep looking so young? I'm aging like a month-old banana!)

Anyway. Booster is long overdue for a new reprint collection, and DC has answered the call. Today, at your Local Comic Shop, you can find this:

If you were buying Booster Gold comics in 2007, you probably already have everything in Booster Gold The Complete 2007 Series Book One, which collects issues #0 through #14 and #1,000,000 (in order of publication). But have you re-read those books lately? Wouldn't it be nice to have them all in one convenient package? (At $29.99, it's much cheaper than the cost of all 16 issues as floppies.)

And if you haven't read Booster Gold Volume 2, what are you doing reading Boosterrific.com? Go! Read!

Buy this trade paperback and make Skeets happy.

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Imagine my surprise when I opened this week's Superman #13 and saw on the very first page this panel of a Booster Gold t-shirt that is not a Booster Gold t-shirt:

What the heck is that, indeed!

If you're a regular Boosterrific visitor, I'm sure you'll recognize the guy in that panel above is clearly wearing a Graphitti Designs Booster Gold Logo t-shirt (released in 2010), just as the guy in the following panel (not pictured) is wearing a Graphitti Designs Blue Beetle Logo t-shirt (released in 2011).

Why is the Booster Gold shirt colored as though it's a Wonder Woman's tiara t-shirt? I can only guess that colorist Alejandro Sanchez doesn't have a closet full of decade-old Graphitti Designs t-shirts. (I don't blame the colorist. I blame the editors. That's their job, isn't it, to take the blame for the creatives? Darn you, editors!)

Fortunately for Booster boosters, our hero appears more clearly on page three... in a photograph hanging on the wall of Warrior's Bar — next to Batman! (Batman looks very happy about that.)

It's just a small Booster Gold appearance, but consider buying this issue to make Skeets happy.

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Booster Gold appears two new books this week!

If you recall the end of Speed Force #5, Booster was the MC for the kickoff of the Symphonee Music Festival. What the reading audience knows — and Booster doesn't — is that Symphonee is actually a mind-control app that the Fiddler, Mad Mod, Music Meister, and Klarion the Witch Boy have built with the ultimate goal of... brainwashing teens for money? Okay, I admit, their ultimate goal still isn't quite clear.

Booster should have known better than to get involved in a business run by a bunch of super-villains. Therefore, it's up to Kid Flash to save the day in Speed Force #6 (preview online at AIPTComics.com):

It might be too late to cut and run, Booster. Do you think the general public is likely to forget that you already went on tv and announced you were a sponsor of this festival — with accompanying merchandise? Those "one-of-a-kind" Booster Gold Symphonee collectors cups are destined to turn up as evidence in a lawsuit and as punchlines on late night talk shows.

Elsewhere, in the backup story in Green Lantern #10, Booster and Skeets have a whole page to debate Booster's declining media exposure. No preview is available for this one, but you shouldn't need one once I tell you that it was drawn by Kevin Maguire!

Buy these issues and make Skeets happy.

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