When your friends care enough to give the very best, they'll give you a Booster Gold sketch.

As you can tell from the inscription, that's a sketch that former Young Justice artist Todd Nauck gave former Booster Gold inker Norm Rapmund for Rapmund's birthday last week. Getting a picture of Booster Gold for your birthday? Now that's friendship!

You can find a larger version of the sketch on Nauck's Tumblr site, and the original black and white outline (plus many other cool drawings) on his Instagram page.

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Thanks to site commenter Anonymous, we have known for a few months that the Jim Pesl referenced in Booster Gold Volume 2 was a high school friend of Norm Rapmund who now works in a restaurant in Northern California.

Thanks to Russ Burlingame's recent "Panel Discussions" podcast, we now know why Norm Rapmund puts Jim Pesl's name (pronounced "pē-zuhl") in his comics:

It was actually kind of funny that it took until Booster Gold for people to notice because [Rapmund]'s been doing this for years. He started slipping Pesl's name in back when he was doing X-Men [beginning in 2000] and he's put it in ... not every issue he's ever inked but pretty much every title he's inked in one way or another.

The pair of them have been friends for 20-odd years. Back in high school Jim was the only other person besides Norm who read comics. When Norm started working in comics and Jim was still reading, he threw the name in there. They live in the same general area, and [Norm found that] Pesl was very excited about having been referenced in X-Men. So Norm started tossing it in and occasionally bringing free comics to Pesl's restaurant. In exchange, Pesl gives Norm food. So there you have it.

Free food sounds like a pretty good reason to put someone's name in your comics, but maybe higher cosmic forces are at play. As fate would have it, the pair graduated from El Dorado High School. El Dorado is the name of the infamous South American City of Gold.

From El Dorado High School to Booster Gold. And now you know the rest of the story.

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Sorry to pull a bait-and-switch on you for Gold Exchange Tuedsay, but it seems that there will be no more "Gold Exchange" columns now that Booster Gold has been canceled. The successor to the "Gold Exchange" will be announced during Russ Burlingame's "Panel Discussions" today on Comics Related. The "Panel Discussions" podcast will also feature Burlingame's call-in interview with Dan Jurgens and Norm Rapmund that was recorded on Friday. Tune in to Comic Related to hear what Dan and Norm have to say.

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Sadly, Booster Gold has been unavoidably detained, but writer Dan Jurgens and co-artist Norm Rapmund will be available in his stead.

Jurgens has written and drawn more Booster Gold appearances than any other writer or artist. Rapmund has inked far more Booster appearances than any other inker. Combined, the pair have worked on over 177 Booster Gold stories! If you've got Booster Gold questions, these are the guys to ask.

The pair will be interviewed by Comic Related contributor Russ Burlingame and broadcast in the near future as part of Burlingame's Panel Discussions podcast. Burlingame will be recording his call in show at 3PM EDT. If you've got something you'd like to say to Jurgens, Rapmund, or Burlingame but a conflicting schedule, call early and leave them a message at (315) 464-0046.

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Now that we have the final issue of Booster Gold in our hands, Boosterrific.com would like to offer a heartfelt "thank you" to everyone who took part in crafting Booster Gold Volume 2. Thanks to Dan Jurgens, Norm Rapmund, Brian Miller and Hi-Fi Designs, Geoff Johns, Jeff Katz, Rex Ogle, Michael Siglain, Harvey Richards, and everyone else whose work made Booster Gold look so good in his own title. We're already eagerly awaiting Volume 3.

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