If you happened to watch the second episode of Stuart Fails to Save the Universe on HBO Max last week (as Shawn and Tony did), you might have seen this at about the 6 minute mark:

If you're very familiar with McFarlane Toys (as Shawn and Tony are), you'll recognize those out-of-focus yellow and blue blurs at the upper left are the 2022 McFarlane Toys DC Multiverse Booster Gold & Blue Beetle 2-pack action figures. Mint in box, Stuart probably has them priced at $100 or more.

Stuart could certainly learn a thing or two about saving multiverses from those guys.

Give the set decorators credit: those Blue and Gold figures are just two of many DC Multiverse background references which hint at the thematically similar parallel universe-setting of this television series, which could just as easily have been called Crisis of Infinite Stuarts.

Thanks to Shawn and Tony for catching this.

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Shawn Baston dropped by last week's comments to alert us to a new instance of characters talking about Booster Gold behind his back. In this case, May's Green Lantern #35, it was Kyle Rayner referencing a movie playing on Booster's public reputation as the Crusader of Capitalism:

words by Jeremy Adams, art by Ig Guara

Sleazy Don Darlington strikes me as the Roger Corman-type who makes low-budget films to capitalize on existing trends, so I doubt Booster Gold himself played any part in the making of "Booster's Quadrillion," which any Booster Gold fan already invested in key events from 1985 probably recognizes as a parody of the 16th highest grossing film of that year: Brewster's Millions staring Richard Pryor and John Candy.

Of course, all time travelers know that history is cyclical. The 1985 Brewster's Millions was a remake of a film by the same name from 1945, which was a remake of a film by the same name from 1935, which was a remake of a film by the same name from 1921, which was a remake of a film by the same name from 1914, which was based on a 1906 play of the same name adapted from a 1902 book of the same name by George Barr McCutcheon.

The premise of each adaptation is that young Brewster has to spend some amount of millions of dollars in a set amount of time in order to inherit a larger amount of millions of dollars. All tallied, across the five movies telling essentially the same story (and without adjusting for inflation), Brewster has to spend about thirty-five million ($35,000,000) to earn three hundred forty-eight million ($348,000,000).

That's a lot of money, but it's no quadrillion. A quadrillion is a staggeringly large number. If Brewster earns $348 million every five movies, he'd have to make 14,367,812 more movies to make one quadrillion dollars ($1,000,000,000,000,000).

Before you get started, Brewster, a word of warning: You're going to run into a spot of bother after you've made the first 14,367 movies because by that time you will have already earned all the money in the world. So for movie 14,368, you're going to need to buy a printing press.

Of course, Booster Gold can access a quadrillion dollars because he is not limited to the present day, or really any restriction of time or space. Maybe the quadrillion he's after isn't even money but something more valuable: time. It's a good thing Booster's functionally immortal. It takes over 31,688,764 years to gather a quadrillion seconds.

The one thing Booster needs to know before he gets started is whether he needs a quadrillion units in American short scale or a quadrillion of the traditional British long scale. These days, most English-speaking countries use the short scale where a quadrillion has 15 zeroes, but a time-traveler like Booster could easily get confused since the English were counting to a quadrillion with 24 zeroes long before the United States existed. That's a difference of nine zeroes! A factor of a full billion! (Or, if you're using the long scale, a factor of one thousand million!) To put that in perspective, it would mean an additional 31,688,764,583,724,000 years of gathering seconds. Obviously, confusing the two would be a very big mistake. Better be sure, Booster.

Thanks for spotting that for us, Shawn.

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OG Booster booster Shawn Baston recently notified me that he had spotted Booster Gold someplace I'd never thought to look: in the pages of DC Super-Pets Character Encyclopedia (Picture Window Books, 2013)!

written by Steve Korte, illustrated by Art Baltazar

Skeets... classified as a pet? I don't think he'd like that.

I've updated the Other Media > Books section of the site with this and a few other books that Shawn was able to confirm, but he suggested still others that *might* have Booster Gold (or Skeets!) appearances that we have not been able to confirm. I thought I'd put the word out to see if any of Booster's other loyal fans could provide any additional insights.

All of the following were published by DK. Links are to the titles on Amazon.com for reference.

LEGO DC Comics Super Heroes Character Encyclopedia: New Exclusive Pirate Batman Minifigure (2016)

LEGO DC Comics Super Heroes Visual Dictionary: With Exclusive Yellow Lantern Batman Minifigure (2018)

DC Comics Year By Year, New Edition: A Visual Chronicle (2019)

DC Comics Cover Art (2020)

The DC Book: A Vast and Vibrant Multiverse Simply Explained (2021)

If anyone can confirm or definitively rule out a Booster Gold (or Skeets!) appearance in any of those — or any other books that may not be listed on Boosterrific.com, please drop a note in the comments below.

Thanks, Shawn!

UPDATE: Logan Peterson has confirmed Booster's inclusion in DC Comics Cover Art, The DC Book, and DC Comics Year By Year. Thanks, Logan!

UPDATE February 20: J adds that Booster Gold is name-dropped in the Kingdom Come novelization that I didn't have in the books section, so I've added that, too. Thanks, J!

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In 2009, Booster Gold endorsed Booster Paste. In 2012, he endorsed Booster Cream Toothpaste. Ten years later, he's back in your mouth, as seen in Nightwing #88!

words by Tom Taylor, art by Bruno Redondo, Adriano Lucas, Andworld Design

What is that? "-esh-dent"? Oooh, the tease! I need to know so that I can buy some to put in *my* face!

Thanks to Booster booster Shaw Baston for spotting this panel.

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OG Booster booster Shawn Baston notified me that Booster makes a very brief, non-continuity appearance in this week's Teen Titans Academy #4 (thanks, Shawn!). Since I was already in the Boosterrific Database, I decided to take the time to (finally!) update data on some other minor reprint collection appearances I'd been putting off. That's when I noticed something odd.

Justice League Unlimited: Time After Time is a collection of time-travel themed Justice League Unlimited stories. The volume was published last November. (Sorry. Like I said, I got a little behind. I'm blaming the pandemic.) This is its cover:

Usually, these trades reuse cover art from one of the issues they collect, but this one clearly needed something a bit more general for the hodgepodge of volumes within. Instead of an existing cover, art was chosen from an existing interior splash page.

The chosen art comes from Justice League Unlimited #9, credited to penciller Carlo Barberi and inker Walden Wong and reprinted in Time After Time. The issue's story sees the JLU travel back in time to help Shining Knight save Camelot from Morgan Le Fey, and the selected art has some of the DCU's biggest names flying into action alongside King Arthur — swinging on a Batrope! That's an image that will sell some comics!

There's just one problem. To make the existing art fit the desired cover layout, it had to be altered. And I don't just mean that the art was recolored to remove the backgrounds. One hero was edited out of the picture entirely.

Care to guess who that hero was?

Here's the splash page as it originally appeared:

Poor Booster!

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