January's Nightwing #100 will have at least 8 covers. But Booster boosters only have to worry about getting our hands on 1 of them.

Presenting the "main" cover by series artist Bruno Redondo, featuring a vary familiar couple of colors:

Blue and Gold forever!

You can see a larger copy of this (and the 7 others) at CBR.com. Thanks to Rob Snow for bringing this to our attention.

Comments (0) | Add a Comment | Tags: bruno redondo cbr.com covers nightwing rob snow solicitations

A primary motivation for my maintenance of this blog promoting DC Comics' Booster Gold is to build a catalog of Booster references outside the world of comic books. So, of course, when I saw yesterday's CBR.com article, "Going For Gold: Booster Gold's Long History Of TV Appearances," I knew I'd have to mention it here.

The article briefly covers the television shows that have included significant Booster Gold appearances, from Justice League Unlimited (2004) to Batman: The Brave and the Bold (2009) to Teen Titans Go!, which gave Booster his first speaking part just this year. It also mentions Booster's two live-action appearances, in the final season Smallville episode "Booster" (2011) and the final season Legends of Tomorrow episode "Knocked Down, Knocked Up" (2022), which had a very, very brief follow-up in The Flash episode "Impulsive Excessive Disorder."

To its credit, the article contains no inaccuracies. However, I expected more, especially considering that there really aren't that many televised Booster Gold appearances. Boosterrific.com maintains a whole page tracking them. I mean, while the article spends a whole paragraph on an obscure cameo appearance in from the 2006 Legion of Super-Heroes, it doesn't mention other cameos in Cartoon Networks' MAD or DC Super Hero Girls. Oh, well, we can't have everything.

If we wanted everything, we'd have to mention things like Booster's 52 cover cameo in MTV's long-forgotten The Hard Times of RJ Berger or Booster's participation the 2012 Robot Chicken DC Comics Special. By the way, Booster almost had a speaking part in that one, a sketch in which he badly defends *not* going back in time and killing Hitler. The sketch was cut for being "too talky," but you can currently see it on Youtube (starting at 5:34).

Anyway, nitpicks aside, I offer congratulations to article writer Alex Russell for spreading the gospel of Booster Gold to those who may not be inclined to read comic books. Russell is a real Booster booster whose CBR bio says he's "still waiting on a Booster Gold movie." You and me both, buddy.

Comments (0) | Add a Comment | Tags: alex russell cbr.com robot chicken television youtube.com

Once a week, Brian Cronin asks Twitter for silly superhero suggestions for random artists to draw for his "Line it is Drawn" column at CBR.com. Last week, the topic was

That delightful exchange got the world this drawing, from artist Caanan Grall:

Brilliant! I think this is a masterful expression of everything I want in a comic book.

Thanks to Eskana for pointing this out.

Comments (0) | Add a Comment | Tags: brian cronin caanan grall cbr.com eskana fan art werehawk

At the San Diego Comic-Con 2022 DC Dark Crisis panel last Thursday, Dark Crisis writer Joshua Williamson announced that the mini-series is being retitled starting with issue #4. That new title is Dark Crisis on Infinite Earths.

Quoteth gamesradar.com:

"We've kept the real name a secret from the start because we didn't want to give away what was happening in the middle of the story, with the return of the Infinite Earths," says writer Joshua Williamson.

Despite my expectations, I'm enjoying Dark Crisis, but I have to feel that I've been reading comic books too long when my first thought is "this renaming reveal is exactly what DC did halfway through Countdown to Final Crisis" and my second thought is "doesn't Williamson realize that he brought back the infinite earths last year in Infinite Frontier?"

Apparently, we get an infinite number of infinite earths now. Continuity? Pfft.

But let's not get distracted by details. The important new news is that Booster Gold (and Skeets!) will be on the cover to Dark Crisis on Infinite Earths #5, available October 4!

The blew up Titans Tower on the cover of issue #2 (mere months after it was blown up and rebuilt in the pages of Teen Titans Academy), and it looks like the Hall of Justice get similar treatment for issue #5. What's next? Wayne Tower? The Flash Museum? It must be hard to get building insurance if you own a signature piece of property on any earth in the DCU. (It makes more and more sense to have your headquarters in an out-of-the-way place like a cave in Happy Harbor, Rhode Island.)

According to BleedingCool.com, the issue is going to have at least 5 covers, including 1:25 by Ariel Colon, 1:50 by Mikel Janin, and 1:100 foil by Daniel Sampere and Alejandro Sanchez (which I suspect will be identical to the default Cover A but shiny!).

From what I've seen so far, it looks like Booster (and Skeets!) will only be on the Ivan Reis and Danny Miki standard variant (Cover B) pictured above. Be sure to tell your Local Comic Shop that's the one you want so they can order it for you!

A somewhat harder to collect Booster Gold cover will be the 1:25 variant of Human Target #8, due on October 25:

That one can't be direct ordered, so the only way to guarantee you get one is to pay your LCS to also order you 25 copies of the regular cover. Cover price $4.99 times 26 copies equals $129.74 before tax. That's an expensive comic! Maybe your LCS will cut you a deal for buying in volume?

You can see all of DC's October solicitations at CBR.com.

Comments (0) | Add a Comment | Tags: 2022 bleedingcool.com cbr.com comic-con conventions covers danny miki dark crisis gamesradar.com human target ivan reis josh williamson justice league ryan sook san diego solicitations

For years and years, artists believed that the best way to show what a comic strip character was thinking was to put their internal dialog in fluffy, bubbly word balloons. According to comics historian Brian Cronin, credit for that innovation belongs to Rudolph Dirks' Katzenjammer Kids newspaper comic strip in the early years of the 20th century.

However, at the dawn of the 21st century, this method began to fall out of favor in mainstream American superhero comics. Old-fashioned, abstract thought balloons were gradually replaced by the more "realistic" approach of putting the same internal dialog in square boxes, as though characters are narrating their behaviors after the fact.

Since this transition happened incrementally over time, it passed largely without comment. Which made me wonder, "When was the last time that Booster Gold used a thought balloon?"

The answer to this question is Superman #124, cover-dated June 1997.

So far as I've been able to tell, Booster Gold never thought again.

It just so happens that this issue also marks the last appearance of Booster's clunky late-90s armor, so it also represents something of bookend to his 1990s adventures. If loosing thought balloons is the price we had to pay to get Booster Gold back in tights, I think I can live with that.

Comments (0) | Add a Comment | Tags: balloons brian cronin cbr.com superman