Everyone who's ever read a DC comic knows Booster Gold's best friend is Ted Kord, aka the Blue Beetle.

But Booster has another best friend, someone who has been there for him since the beginning: his sidekick Skeets!

Yet somehow we almost never see the three of them, Booster, Beetle, and Sheets together.

After a stray comment made last month by Booster booster Cort, I decided to pull from the Boosterrific database a list of all the times that Ted Kord and Skeets have appeared in the same comic with Booster Gold.

Here's that list:

1. Booster Gold #22

November 1987

2. Justice League America #71

February 1993

3. Justice League America #87

April 1994

4. Extreme Justice #1

February 1995

5. Extreme Justice #2

March 1995

6. Extreme Justice #3

April 1995

7. Extreme Justice #4

May 1995

8. Extreme Justice #14

March 1996

9. Extreme Justice #15

April 1996

10. Extreme Justice #16

May 1996

11. Extreme Justice #17

June 1996

12. Extreme Justice #18

July 1996

13. Justice League America #112

July 1996

14. Justice League Task Force #37

August 1996

15. Total Justice #1

October 1996

16. Total Justice #2

Early November 1996

17. Final Night #1

November 1996

18. Final Night #3

November 1996

19. Green Lantern #81

December 1996

20. Superboy and the Ravers #8

April 1997

21. JLA #38

February 2000

22. JLA: Our Worlds At War #1

September 2001

23. Superman: Day of Doom #1

January 2003

24. 52 #52

May 2007

25. Booster Gold #6

March 2008

26. Booster Gold #0

April 2008

27. Booster Gold #10

August 2008

28. Booster Gold #26

January 2010

29. Booster Gold #27

February 2010

30. Booster Gold #34

September 2010

31. Booster Gold #35

October 2010

32. Booster Gold #36

November 2010

33. Booster Gold #37

December 2010

34. Booster Gold #38

January 2011

35. DC Universe: Legacies #9

March 2011

Only 35 issues over 35 years! And Skeets and Beetle don't always appear in the same scenes in those 35 issues! Heck, Skeets doesn't meet with either of the other 2 in the first few issues of Extreme Justice! It's almost like Skeets and Blue Beetle only cross paths at the annual Justice League Christmas party.

As for the issues where all 3 do appear together, you might remember that for a while around the turn of the millennium, Skeets was incorporated into Booster's armor, which means Skeets literally came between Blue and Gold!

I'm not exactly saying there's any animosity between Booster's two BFFs. I'm just saying that it's pretty clear that Skeets prefers the company of Rip Hunter to Ted Kord.

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First things first: 26 Down in today's LA Times crossword puzzle (by Winston Emmons, edited by Rich Norris) is "Robot companion of superhero Booster Gold."

Hundreds of thousands of people work daily crosswords puzzles, so this is great exposure for Booster Gold. If you are one of them, and you are dropping by Boosterrific.com for the first time today, hello. The answer is "Skeets."

Elsewhere, those of us who read Booster Gold comic books will find slim pickings on the ol' periodical rack this week. To the best of my current knowledge, the only place you'll find our hero in the latest releases from DC Comics is in the pages of Superman Volume 4: Mythology, reprinting Superman #20-28, including this panel from Superman #23:

I like that panel — artist Kevin Maguire's take on Blue and Gold *and* the Wonder Twins? Yes, please! — but I'm not sure it's worth $20 for an entire reprint collection.

Instead I'd encourage you to go out and pick up the single back issue from your Local Comic Shop where it's probably selling for... *looks it up on eBay* ... $25?!? Because it's the "1st appearance of Xanadoth"? Xanadoth? You've got to be kidding me. Xanadoth has been in exactly *two* comic books. Fat chance of seeing him as an answer in a crossword puzzle.

Ahem. As I was saying, $20 is a pretty good deal. Buy this issue and make Skeets (and cruciverbalists everywhere) happy.

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Illustrator Dean Beattie revealed a recent commission on Twitter last week. See if you recognize these guys:

Judging by that high collar, you can probably guess that this was commissioned by Cort. Kudos to both the artist and patron.

By the way, seeing Skeets here reminds me that Blue Beetle and Skeets have never spent much time together. It's kind of like Booster has two best friends that he keeps apart from each other. I assume he doesn't want them gossiping about him behind his back. It's okay; Skeets can be your friend, too, Ted.

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Childhood is a time of learning about the world around you and preparing you for the future. But what if your childhood won't happen for another few centuries and your future is in the past? That's the case for time-traveling hero Booster Gold, whose 25th-century upbringing may not have prepared him for 21st-century life.

SPORTS: The most popular sport in the mid 2400s will be familiar to 21st-century inhabitants. Aside from some minor technological innovations like sensors on the goal line to detect touchdowns, the sport will look and play in ways pretty much exactly as it had 400 years earlier. Someone watching a game in 1982 would have little trouble following the action in 2442.

Even the economics of the sport will be little changed. Just as in the 21st century, 25th-century college athletes will be considered "amateurs" who earn their institutions and commercial partners — and bookmakers — considerable revenue while making no income themselves.

Booster Gold #18

Though at the time, star quarterback Michael "Booster" Carter wouldn't have cared about such things, mastering the game of football would be a great indoctrination in 21st-century culture.

DIET: Soy dogs might have seemed far-fetched to citizens of 1987, but meat substitutes are all the rage in the 2020s as they will be in the Gotham City of the 25th century. We can only imagine what will make the population of the future turn their back on meat. Is it a commercial necessity following the Great Disaster? Is it an ethical consideration for animal welfare? Or do soy dogs just plain taste better than 20th-century hot dogs?

Whatever the case, by the 25th century, science will have advanced enough that people can have a different relationship with food than 21st-century diners. In Booster Gold's native time, gourmands will be able to eat whatever they like without fear of unhealthy weight gain.

Justice League Quarterly #6

That system sure beats rice cakes.

ROBOTS: In the 21st century, artificial intelligence really isn't very intelligent. Speech recognition software can decipher what television channel you want to watch and scanning algorithms can unlock your phone, but Siri isn't thinking or feeling in the traditional sense. That will have changed drastically by the year 2462.

Booster Gold will be raised in a world in which self-sufficient robots can be counted on to reliably perform many complicated jobs, including valet and security guard. There's plenty of evidence between the panels of Booster's adventures to suggest the only thing keeping robots from becoming further integrated into society is resistance from biological lifeforms.

Booster Gold #16

Thinking robots may not exist in the 21st century, but bigotry is eternal.

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Let me start with this disclaimer: I don't speak Spanish. The following story by Xabier Migelez comes to me secondhand through MSN.com and Google Translate:

Javier Dãvila loses the boat of 'Pasapalabra' because of the Booster Gold robot

Javier Dãvila caressed the juicy pot of 'Pasapalabra' on Monday . The man from Salamanca played a great program, but could not win the 1,570,000 euros at stake. For the second time in this stage, Dãvila was just one word away from correctly completing the rosco .

The program was looking for the "name of the comic book character, who is a robot, who accompanies the superhero Booster Gold on his adventures" , but did not find the correct answer. The contestant went around the donut six times, leaving only the letter 'S' unanswered.

Despite having more than enough time on the scoreboard, Dãvila acknowledged not knowing the answer: "I'll keep thinking because Booster Gold doesn't sound like anything to me. As long as I have time, I'll have hope." But after Pablo [Diaz]'s second ruling, the man from Salamanca had to risk and choose an answer. He said 'Stan', the very name of the autonomous valet robot that already works at Lyon Airport , but it wasn't the answer the show was looking for.

You mean to tell me there is a Spanish television game show that asked its contestant about Booster Gold's sidekick? I'm not sure I'd believe that even without the questionable syntax of Google Translate if I hadn't found a video clip of the episode on the website of the show's channel, antena3.com.

One-and-a-half million euros is a lot of money to lose, but don't feel too bad, Dávila. I'm sure most Americans don't recognize Skeets, either.

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