Welcome to Sports Week, Booster Gold!

Haven't done a theme week in rather a long time, so let's use this one to talk about sports. Yeah yeah yeah, I don't know a damn thing about sports. I don't even consider it a "geek niche" as stats wizards sometimes seem to. (Look, ever watched Beat the Geeks? Ever seen a Sports Geek? That's right. Now shut up.) And yet, there's room for a crossover. Let's flip through some comics to find some sports... Ah yeah, found some. (For Marvel Universe baseball games, I recommend the last month or so of posts on Random Happenstance - Googum has closed off that particular posting opportunity but good.)

BOOSTER GOLD #5, DC Comics, June 1986
Before becoming DC Comics' answer to Sam Beckett, Booster Gold was the hero who wanted to cash in on his fame. He does the right thing and fights criminals and evil, but on the side, why not have your face on the Wheaties box? Why not act in a movie-of-the-week about your life? If people are willing to pay for your image, why not let them? Writer/artist Dan Jurgens drafted a pretty cool story for the first year and a half before it fizzled out (like any media "phenomenon" - remember when we thought Heroes was cool?), but #5 is early still, with the totally appropriate inks of Mike DeCarlo, an artist that, to me, is all about making everyone look like they have lip gloss. Very Booster Gold.

This particular issue is a bit of a one-off in which the villain, a terrorist holding up a hockey game, is dispatched before you reach the comics' staples. And then we explore the business side of things. Let me repeat the important part: A hockey game. Considering that my favorite Van Damme movie is - as unlikely as it sounds - Sudden Death, I loved the idea of Booster fighting hockey players (Mr. Twister forces them to, and heck, that's what they do best). I know less about the DC Universe's NHL than I do our own, but maybe someone can tell me who that player for the Metropolis Mammoths that gets killed is. His name is André, he's #8 and he's a fiery French-Canadian (I imagine). So who's the best real world bet for this role who would have been traded to a fictional team?
Booster wins with not a little help from his pet robot Skeets (the best part of the book, hands down - I always imagined him with K.I.T.T.'s voice... you know, the car from Knight Rider), and well, that's that.

Oh yeah, we also see the Boostermobile, a Chrysler... I mean, Brysler... creation, and Booster takes it out for a drive that would make even Bo and Luke Duke lose their cookies.
The punch is: Booster's from the future and doesn't have a driver's license.
BONUS: THE DC UNIVERSE'S NHL
According to Mayfair Games' Atlas of the DC Universe. This was published in 1990 before some of Canada's teams were stolen by the southern states. Hm, while I would of course be scared of the Gotham Blades, I think they just might look like girl scouts next to the Hub City Slashers.