Released yesterday to a Local Comic Shop near you: DC Cybernetic Summer #1, including Booster Gold & Blue Beetle [and Skeets] in "The Boys of Summer" by Heath Corson, Scott Koblish, Hi-Fi, and Carlos M. Mangual.

CBR.com has the issue preview, but with Skeets on the cover, I'm sure you don't need it. (Which is good, because neither Booster nor Skeets is actually in the preview. Just Batman. Because Batman = DC Comics. I mean, who else would they let drive that Metal Men Jeep? Superman doesn't even own a car. Speaking of which, who formed the tires? It must be that newest Metal Man: Steel-Belted Radials.)

Buy this issue and make Skeets happy.

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As many, many people have told me, Booster Gold appears in the October 2020 DC Comics solicitations. This is — as all Booster Gold appearances should be — Big News, big enough to be covered by many of the usual comic book news websites.

Compare the headlines "Batman vs. Batman Beyond Is Happening - And It's Booster Gold's Fault" and "Batman Will Finally Fight Batman Beyond Thanks to Booster Gold". The former belongs to CBR.com, who never misses a chance to troll Booster Gold fans. The latter belongs to ComicBook.com, where the Internet's foremost Booster Gold reporter, Russ Burlingame, adds a lot more context and a bit of speculation based on his past experience with the character. I'll leave you to your judgment which of those two links you should read.

Or, if you're in a hurry, you can just read the original solicitation below:

BATMAN BEYOND #48
written by DAN JURGENS
art by SEAN CHEN
cover by DAN MORA

"First Contact" begins! Something is very, very wrong with Bruce Wayne, as he lashes out in anger and tries to kill Batman Beyond! Who else can save him but...Booster Gold?! The greatest hero history never knew is going to take Batman Beyond back in time to the Gotham of old, where Bruce Wayne is Batman—which means Batman and Batman Beyond will meet at last!
ON SALE October 27, 2020

No matter whose fault it is, Batman must be getting tired of Booster Gold interfering with his destiny.

Though Batman Beyond #48 was the only solicitation to mention Booster Gold by name (and the only one to get promoted in the comic book press), our hero also appears in the announced reprint collections of Heroes in Crisis, plus lesser appearances in Batman/Superman Vol 1, Justice League Unlimited: Time After Time, and Underworld Unleashed: The 25th Anniversary TP.

You can find the complete list of DC October 2020 solicitations at GamesRader.com.

Keep your piggy banks nearby, Booster boosters. You're going to need all your pennies this October.

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A recent clickbait listicle at CBR.com written by Brett Hoover has the very pointed title "Justice League: 5 Reasons Why Blue Beetle Is The Most Annoying Member (& 5 Why It's Booster Gold)."

I was initially going to let this obvious bit of fanboy-baiting slide, but then I decided that if I wasn't willing to fight for Booster Gold, who would? So in the interest of giving equal time to Booster bashers, let me directly address those 5 reasons. (I'll leave it to others to defend Ted Kord and Jaime Reyes.)

Reason 5. Booster Gold: Believes Himself To Be More Powerful Than He Really Is
Superheroes have egos. In fact, in most cases that is what makes them super as they are constantly trying to improve themselves to live up to their own and others' expectations of them. That said, in the case of Booster Gold, it is just sad how he tries to portray himself as one of Earth's mightiest heroes when, in fact, he is just a chump in a costume. What is even sadder is that, because of his enormous ego, he doesn't even notice that others see through his facade.

No one can deny that Booster Gold has an over-sized ego, but if the premise is that he's the worst Justice Leaguer, the real question is whether his ego is more over-inflated than other Leaguers. I'd say Booster's sense of self-importance, while impressive, is dwarfed by the runaway delusions of self-important grandeur often displayed by the likes of Batman, Hawkman, Green Arrow, or Parallax Extant Hal Jordan.

Reason 4. Booster Gold: Not Earth's Mightiest Hero
Certain superheroes seek to earn their place in the top ranks of the Justice League. Many work for years to even get admitted to the A-level superhero squad. While all are heroic in their own way and are confident in their own powers, Booster Gold takes his accomplishments and quadruples the amount of importance his actions really played in any situation. It isn't wrong to be confident but confidence is something that is obtained through surviving the tough battles, not just given like he wants it to be.

This sure sounds like a duplication of the first complaint. No less a talent than Geoff Johns dubbed Booster Gold "The Greatest Hero You've Never Heard Of" explicitly because when a time-cop like Booster Gold does his job correctly and saves a multiverse, you don't see the tough battles he fought on your behalf. If someone has to be a publicly recognized, best-selling A-lister before they join the league, someone might want to break the news gently to Martian Manhunter, Red Tornado, and Firestorm.

Reason 3. Booster Gold: Attention Seeking Superhero
Booster Gold isn't known for his modesty when it comes to the good deeds he has committed. In fact, he oftentimes hopes and prays that there is a camera on each corner taking his picture as he saves the day. This attention-seeking aspect of his persona leaves many superhero allies with a bad taste in their mouth when forced to team up with him. Yet, instead of realizing how pathetic such a demeanor truly is, he instead begins to believe their animosity is because of his true heroism.

Sure, Booster has frequently lamented not receiving the earned respect of his peers, but that final sentence is patently untrue. I think you, like so many others before you, have confused him with Green Lantern, specifically Guy Gardner. Or Obsidian. Or Triumph. (Surely I'm not the only person who remembers Triumph, the founding leaguer who was lost in timeline shenanigans. Speaking of timeline shenanigans....)

Reason 2. Booster Gold: Mentored By His Own Son
Some of the worst things shows or comics about time travel have to deal with are the paradoxes these travelers inflict on time itself. Fans see it often enough by the Flash who has jumped around the past and the future on countless occasions. Booster Gold's attempts at messing with time ultimately resulted in him not only coming in contact with his son, but being mentored by the child he hadn't yet raised, along with having his future self shape his past self.

Time paradoxes make for bad Justice Leaguers? Sure, Triumph was a jerk, but time paradoxes are practically a prerequisite for league membership. Stalwarts like Superman and Supergirl had plenty of time-twisting adventures with the future's Legion of Super-Heroes in their past, Plastic Man's JLA adventures through time would prove him functionally immortal, and Moon Maiden seemed nice enough while she existed. (Can anyone explain why the Flash gets a pass here? Is it because the Cosmic Treadmill is cool? Because it is.)

Reason 1. Booster Gold: Runs From The Present To Live In The Past
There's a common time travel fantasy about going back in time with modern technology in order to impress the denizens of the past. If that weren't the main reason Booster Gold traveled in time, it wouldn't be so sad. Booster Gold was so unimportant in his time that the only way to feed his ego was to time travel to the past and show off his futuristic technology.

Well, you have me there. It's not a very heroic origin, is it? I guess there's a reason the Justice League never let a criminal like Lex Luthor join. Oh, they did? Well, then. Case dismissed.

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If you venture to your Local Comic Shop today, you may find the collected Year of the Villain: Hell Arisen TPB among the new releases. Then again, you may not. Year of the Villain: Hell Arisen #3 was so popular, it's already been through three printings, so it's not hard to imagine that the trade collecting the whole series won't also be popular.

If you didn't know by now, Booster Gold can be seen in three of the Year of the Villain: Hell Arisen mini-series' four issues. He doesn't have a single line of dialogue in any of those issues, so it's kind of like a series of glorified cameo appearances.

And since we're on the subject of cameo appearances:

Superman: Man of Tomorrow #7, words by Dave Wielgosz; art by Miguel Menonca, Yasmine Putri, David Baron

On the bottom left you'll see Booster Gold appearing in the digital first Superman: Man of Tomorrow #7, now available at Comixology.com. Those stories will presumably be printed on real-world paper one of these days, though DC has yet to announce a date. I'll try to keep you posted. Thanks to fabri24cr for calling our attention to that.

Booster Gold is on the left side of this panel, too, though which Booster Gold from which corner of the Multiverse, I can't be sure. That image of Greg Capullo art comes from this recent Tweet from Scott Snyder, the writer behind this summer's multiverse-spanning Dark Nights: Death Metal event. The panel doesn't appear in Dark Nights: Death Metal #1, which was released yesterday, but you still might want to pick that comic up so you'll have a chance at deciphering what's happening when Booster does arrive on the scene. (Again, thanks to fabri24cr for deciphering that the panel has to be Death Metal-related.)

DCEASED: Dead Planet #1, words by Tom Taylor; at by Trevor Hairsine, Stefano Gaudinao, Gig Baldissini

Booster Gold appears on the right for a change in the upcoming DCEASED: Dead Planet #1. Why not the left side of the panel? Maybe because he's a ghost. (Well, not a ghost, exactly. Booster didn't die in DCEASED: A Good Day To Die so much as he was erased from history. Therefore, this is really more of an hallucinatory flashback courtesy the tortured memory of Jon Constantine than it is an actual cameo appearance.) Dead Planet #1 is due out next week in two weeks, and I might have missed it if not for Booster booster Logan Peterson pointing it out. The preview is already available on CBR.com.

It's starting to look like the summer of Booster Gold.

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DC announced late Wednesday that it intends to release a summer anthology special, DC Cybernetic Summer. Everything that Booster Gold fans need to know is on Dan Mora's cover.

That's right, it's Skeets! (This is, I think, the first time Skeets has appeared on a cover without Booster. Good job, little buddy!)

The 80-page giant will include at least 10 stories. CRB.com has the whole list, but the important one is

Booster Gold, Blue Beetle and Skeets in "The Boys of Summer" by Heath Corson and Scott Koblish

I've already started sewing my mask so I'll be ready when this book lands in my Local Comic Shop on July 28. (A Tuesday? That's going to take some getting used to).

Thanks to Rob Snow and Modinda for the alert.

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