Have you bought a digital copy of Smallville: Season 11 #42 yet? If you're waiting for the collected edition, you're in for a bit of a surprise. Introducing Silver Skeets:

Emerald Eye of Ekron, meet the Silver Sphere of Skeets!

That's issue artist Daniel HDR's take on Smallville's Skeets. HDR was clearly inspired by the Skeets of Justice League Unlimited, although this Skeets looks like the Silver Surfer's beach ball.

Whether you like the look or not, just don't tell Skeets that the new shell makes it look fat. If you hurt Skeets' feelings, we won't ever get to see Booster's sidekick in the New 52!

Comments (4) | Add a Comment | Tags: daniel hdr skeets smallville

On this day in 1995, Booster Gold and Skeets were reunited in Extreme Justice #4.

I'd love to tell you it was a touching reunion between two old friends, but I'd be lying. Skeets appears in exactly three panels. The Blue Beetle's new Bug gets more attention. Heck, Mister Miracle's sidekick Oberon gets a bigger part, and Mister Miracle isn't even in this issue.

As you know, Extreme Justice has something of a reputation as the bad seed among the Justice League International-era titles. Honestly, this book won't do much to disabuse anyone of that opinion.

The story is little more than standard, soap-opera style melodramatics. Extreme Justice plots are typically like Hollywood action movies: big, loud, and dumb. Ironically, writer Dan Vado's strength isn't the action but the character development through interpersonal relationships. You might think that would make this reunion issue a success. You'd be wrong.

This is not Vado's best work. The action crowds out significant character development. Captain Atom is callous, Maxima is insane, and Firestorm, a former member of the "Satellite Era" Justice League, is a spoiled child. Amazing Man is shoehorned into a role best filled by Captain Atom, as though Vado was struggling to find a niche for his own character to fill.

If Vado's character development is typically the strongest part of Extreme Justice, the art is always its biggest weakness. This issue is no different, as guest artist Mozart Cuoto and inker Ken Branch combine to create panels with wildly inconsistent characters and hard-to-follow action. Unsatisfying is probably not a strong enough word.

So, as I said. Extreme Justice #4 features the reunion between Skeets and Booster Gold after several months apart. While we are still hoping to see Booster Gold and Skeets reunited in the New 52, we have to hope that it will be better than this.

Comments (2) | Add a Comment | Tags: dan vado extreme justice history ken branch mozart cuoto reviews skeets

If you were even halfway paying attention, you might have heard the "big news" regarding a particular sidekick that the New York Post broke yesterday. (If you haven't, you're the lucky one, then.) The important side effect of this news is that now the DCnU now has an opening for our favorite sidekick, Skeets!

To celebrate this great news, create your own Skeets papercraft model!

Go to CyberDrone's Deviant Art page to download a full-size template, print it out, cut it up, and fold your own Skeets paper model. Once you've done that, rest easy knowing that DC can never take it away from you.

Comments (3) | Add a Comment | Tags: cubeecraft cyberdrone deviantart.com fan art skeets

No, I don't normally run Boostle posts, but this isn't a bromance, it's a fusion.

Artist Stark-liverbird at Deviant Art combined the costumes of Booster and Beetle (and Skeets and the Bug!) to create this "Booster Gold + Blue Beetle fusion." Could this be the Beetle Gold of Earth-2? Maybe I'm old-school, but I think those gold boy shorts are quintessentially super heroic.

Comments (1) | Add a Comment | Tags: blue beetle boostle costumes deviantart.com fan art skeets stark-liverbird

Lest you think that the JLA Trophy Room only keeps multiple versions of costumes, think again. The JLA keeps everything they can get their hands on, including multiple copies of discarded sidekicks!

In JLA Secret Files #2, Zauriel tells us that the JLA Watchtower houses the shell of the original Skeets. Don't worry about Skeets gathering dust on the moon, however, as this is just an empty shell. At the time, Skeets' artificial intelligence was being retasked as the operating system in Booster Gold's Mark XI armor. This made Skeets' original golden body superfluous.

Skeets was returned to this familiar football-shaped shell when Booster upgraded to a powersuit that didn't need a sentient operating system. But the JLA Trophy Room doesn't surrender trophies easily! They won't lose one Skeets without gaining another.

As seen in Justice League of America, Volume 2, #7, the new Justice League Hall of Justice had replaced its original Skeets shell with the corpse of the corrupted Skeets from the pages of 52. It would take a lot of scavenging to fill this cavernous new Trophy Room!

Does the presence of Mr. Mind's Skeets mean that the JLA is aware Booster Gold saved the multiverse in 52? Probably not. As we've seen, the JLA, like a team of super-powered magpies, will put anything shiny in their Trophy Room. Everything that glisters may not be gold, but you can't tell that to the JLA.

Comments (0) | Add a Comment | Tags: justice league skeets trophy room