Booster Gold #23 is the last adventure of Booster's first volume untainted by editorially-mandated connections to the mega-crossover Millennium event. In hindsight, that makes this comedic exchange between Superman and Booster Gold from page 19 even more poignant.

Pay particular attention to how the content of individual panels flows down and across the page as the scene gradually transitions from the victorious heroes on the top of the building who shrink down to a worm's eye view the giant head of villainous mastermind Lex Luthor at page bottom. The use of a Dutch angle perspective at the page bottom even leads the reader's eye back up the page to reinforce Luthor's contrast with smiling Superman! What a nice finishing touch.

Dan Jurgens' greatest artistic strength has always been laying out dynamic action scenes that enhance a story's narrative flow, and that's perfectly on display here.

Comments (0) | Add a Comment | Tags: dan jurgens favorite pages lex luthor superman

I'm thinking pretty seriously about abandoning Twitter altogether, especially in the wake of the company adopting the Dogecoin icon as its logo. I tire of the new management's shenanigans.

And I have to say I'm going to miss it when I go. Where else could I see something like this?

If you're not familiar with "Tom Sawyer," go listen to it on Youtube.com

This is pretty fitting from just about every angle. Rush's sci-fi loving, envelope-pushing progressive-rock sounds (and mysterious lyrics) encapsulate the spirt of Booster Gold, just as Booster himself embodies Mark Twain's literary archetype of the (usually) well-intentioned but mischievous All-American Boy. In hindsight, it's an obvious pairing.

If you need me, Twitter, I'll be in the garage listening to my 1981 Rush Moving Pictures album on 8-track. Newer isn't always better.

Comments (1) | Add a Comment | Tags: dan jurgens music rush twitter.com

A little something different today for Booster Gold #21. Rather than show you the page that's my favorite — probably page 6, but I like Ty Templeton inking Dan Jurgens so much, it could be just about any of them — I'm going to showcase the page I think is the most interesting. Page 21:

As I said, I love the art, the beautifully naturalistic posing, musculature, textures, and expressions. But what makes this page so interesting to me is the layout.

Since Booster Gold is the first to speak in panel one, he's on the left. As a rule in English-language comics, speech balloons should be read in order from left to right (following the visual scanning tendency imparted by our left-to-right language construction). Therefore, it generally follows that in American comics, the first speaker should appear on the left side of the panel. In this case, that's Booster, who Jurgens the artist cleverly puts in the long cast shadow of the evil alien mastermind. So far, so great.

The alternating tight close-ups in panels two and three follow in the familiar tradition of the cinematic Western showdown between gunslingers, with Booster playing the white hat cowboy against the gloating villain. The allusion to a gunfight is especially apt given Booster's charged wrist blaster and accompanying death threat. That's a bluff, of course, but the alien hopefully doesn't know that.

And then there's panel four. By the same rules as panel one, the first speaker, Booster, should be on the left. But there's extra reason to put Booster on the left here because Booster was established on the left in panel one. Sequential art and cinema follow many of the same rules, one of those being the convention that speakers shouldn't abruptly swap positions during a scene. Cinema calls this the 180-degree rule. While this rule can and sometimes should be broken, doing so always calls attention to the violation, which is unwarranted here. So it might seem that panel four is following all the rules. But it's also wrong.

From the position of the reader, when the alien Rangor tells Booster Gold to "look," he points behind Booster to the left. In sequential art, where each panel represents a specific moment in a sequence, Rangor is essentially pointing the reader backwards in time. The figures in the panel should be posed such that Rangor points to the right, visually guiding the reader's eye to the issue's big reveal on the story's last page.

In the original publication, this is especially egregious as page 21 was printed on the left side of a two page spread!

When the issue was reprinted in Booster Gold: Future Lost, DC had the good sense to revise this so that page 21 was printed on the righthand side. The reader has to turn the page to uncover the surprise ending. It's a big improvement.

While we're here, I'd be amiss not to call attention to the contribution to these panels by colorist Gene D'Angelo. The first panel is a primarily an unsettling orange. Then each panel becomes progressively cooler in color temperature — pink, light blue, dark blue — as Booster's hot-blooded threat is chilled by the villain's machinations. It's a very nice touch (that looks even better with Jurgens' pyramidal layout).

Did I say this wasn't my favorite page? I might have to rethink that.

Booster Gold comics: even when they're bad, they're good!

Comments (2) | Add a Comment | Tags: dan jurgens favorite pages gene d'angelo sequential art ty templeton

Bad news first: DC's June 2023 solicitations are out at aiptcomics.cpom, and there's not a Booster Gold to be seen. That's 4 months and counting of no predictable appearances. This new "Dawn of DC" is looking less and less golden.

(Over the weekend, TwinCitiesGeek.com reported that Dan Jurgens has "started writing another Black Label project for DC" that "will be coming a little later yet this year." Seems unlikely that it'll be a Black Label Booster Gold story, but who knows?)

On the brighter side, while Booster is on hero hiatus, Boosterrific.com is better than ever thanks in no small part to J, who has spent an inordinate amount of time hunting down errors in the annotations and book details. Together, we're making things right that once went wrong.

Why, just this weekend, J discovered that the site was missing (count 'em!) two different Justice League Unlimited reprint volumes that contain Booster Gold adventures. Oops!

Shame on me for missing those, but hearty thanks to J for all the hard work. Booster boosters everywhere owe you a debt of gratitude. Keep up the good work!

Comments (0) | Add a Comment | Tags: aiptcomics.com black label dan jurgens j justice league unlimited solicitations twincitiesgeek.com

BleedingCool.com reports

DC Comics has announced 2023 editions of the following books: Creature Commandos, Batman And Son, Booster Gold: 52 Pick Up, The Authority Book One, Batman And Robin Vol 1: Batman Reborn, and Wonder Woman: Paradise Found.

It's great that 52 Pick Up is getting a new printing, but it makes me wonder whether that's happening just because it finally sold out on Amazon following the recent announcement about Warner Bros' latest plans or whether its story (by Geoff Johns) will be the basis for James Gunn's show.

Based on Gunn's "Chapter 1: Gods and Monsters" announcement, I've been assuming that his Booster Gold show will be based on Jurgens' original run, which is collected in The Big Fall and is also sold out on Amazon. But no reprint announcement for that one yet.

So Johns over Jurgens? Or am I reading too much into this? Probably the latter. If Gunn's previous work is any indication, the television show won't hew too closely to any previously published story.

Comments (2) | Add a Comment | Tags: 52 pick-up big fall bleedingcool.com dan jurgens geoff johns reprints