Last week on Twitter, the image of a 1938 house advertisement for Action Comics #1 inspired Russ Burlingame to compare it to "that Direct Currents-style book that circulates as '1: Booster Gold' from time to time."

For those of you who don't know, Burlingame was talking about this, DC Releases Vol.1, No. 21, February, 1986:

DC Releases was a free handout for customers in the nascent direct comics market of the mid-to-late 1980s. (No. 48 was the final issue before it was replaced by Direct Currents, which continued to promote DC products for another decade.) This is called the "February" issue because it was promoting books with a "February" cover date, although they were mostly being sold to consumers in October/November 1985.

The solicitation text, likely written by DC's promotional copywriter extraordinaire, Paul Kupperberg, is pretty Boosterrific:

He's In It For The Bucks!

Talk shows! Prime-time commercials! Opening night bashes! T.V. guest appearances! Product endorsements! Where does this guy come from?

Just between you and me, the other heroes in the DC Universe aren't too hot on Booster Gold's strivings for star-status. But Skeets, on the other hand, is loving it! Skeets? Oh. He's Booster's flying, computerized companion. Who knows where he came from, either. But wherever it is, all the gossip columns have it that he and Booster came together!

As Metropolis goes goo-goo and ga-ga over this empowered hunk (ya gotta hand it to the guy), he keeps his priorities straight! He knows that being a celebrity super-hero means being a super-hero first, and when B.G. puts his powers into drive—watch out!

In this premier issue, Booster must recover a satellite guidance system stolen from S.T.A.R. Labs (I hope he doesn't miss his contract negotiation meeting because of that!) And: Action explodes in the streets of Metropolis when the incredibly strong Blackguard meets our affluent hero face-to-face!

Dan Jurgens, penciller on The Legion of Super-Heroes, Sun Devils, and Warlord, and Mike DeCarlo, who inked Dan on Warlord, promise a super-action series, seasoned with just the right blend of satire, urbane wit, and humor. So, as Booster Gold would say, buy, buy, buy!

While the widely-seen house ad for Booster Gold #1 that was included in Crisis on Infinite Earths #11 (and almost every other book DC published in October 1985) is more famous and much more widely seen than DC Releases, this handout was created specifically to promote books released on October 8, 1985 (including Crisis on Infinite Earths #11). Therefore, as Russ said, Booster's cover panel here is very likely the character's very first public appearance.

That's why you'll find copies going for $500 on eBay.

Personally, I'd rather spend my money on comics rather than advertisements for comics, but you do you.

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Booster booster Aaron Hale is currently selling ten pages of the original color guide for Justice League International #25 on eBay.com.

What's a color guide, you ask? Time for a brief history lesson!

Computers and modern printing techniques have changed things, but for most of the history of comics, all hues were printed from a few shades of one of three distinct colors. Below is artist Todd Klein's color chart from the 1980s when he worked at DC Comics. It has codes for each possible color, where "Y" stands for yellow, "B" for blue, and "R" for red. The "2" meant 25% saturation, "3" was 50% saturation, "4" was 75% saturation, and no number was fully saturated, pure color. When JLI #25 was released in 1989, 124 colors were possible.

DC colors on cover stock via KleinLetters.com

Like a kid with a single box of crayons, the colorist filled in the black and white drawings with watercolor paints to match those colors. The less fun part came after the paint dried. That's when the colorist had to go back over their work to provide the printer of the comic with an appropriate code for each color used so that the image could be reproduced. The colored and coded page was called a color guide, and that's what Aaron is selling.

Justice League International #25, page 11, panel 1 as planned

(If all that sounds like a lot to do, keep in mind that it was followed by a much more labor-intensive process called color separation. Using the coded pages of the color guide as their template, the color separator would paint sheets of acetate to be used when photographing the original art for transfer to the four printing plates needed for the CYMK color process. Printing comics was hard work!)

Justice League International #25, page 11, panel 1 as printed

Aaron's auction ends tomorrow, so don't drag your feet. If you'd like to lay your eyes (or your hands) on a bit of Blue and Gold history, hurry over to eBay.com today!

(And if you'd like more information about how comics are made, check out Todd Klein's fine blog at kleinletters.com or Klein's book co-written with Mark Chiarello, The DC Comics Guide to Coloring and Lettering Comics.)

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The Blot dropped by on Twitter to point out another unusual Booster Gold product, something called an "Ooshie."

This is, apparently, the fourth wave of Ooshies pencil toppers, which means that I am very old and out of touch with... whatever is going on here.

Ooshies are generally sold via blind bags, meaning you never know what Ooshie you might be buying and might spend forever hunting one down to find out what they really look like. Luckily for me, I live in the Internet age. Voila!

That image comes via eBay, where you can bid on your very Booster Gold Ooshie here. What a wonderful world.

Thanks, Blot!

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If you were buying DC Comics in the mid-90s, you might remember the company's trend of having a single story conceit linking all their summer annuals. In 1996, the theme was "Legends of the Dead Earth," a series of Elseworlds-style imaginary stories considering how DC's heroes might live on in the far future.

Most of these stories featured legacy heroes, but Justice League America Annual #10 took a different tack. While its story, "The Alliance" by Christopher Priest, did take place in the far future, its central hero and villains were all active Justice League members of the time. Max Lord, Captain Atom, and, yes, Booster Gold all play central roles, as illustrated in original art from the issue that is now being sold on eBay.com for a very reasonable price.

Pencils by Sergio Cariello, Inks by Nick J. Napolitano

Given that the big bad is Maxwell Lord and the Justice League of the future were "volunteers" with altered DNA, this annual might have been more than a little influential in stories that would come along years later in Countdown to Infinite Crisis and Justice League 3000.

It is also the first time Booster wore a costume with an asymmetrically placed star!

For either of those reasons, it might not be a bad issue to own some original art from.

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Today marks the negative 425th birthday of Jon Michael "Booster" Carter, born this day in the year 2442.

If you've got $100 to drop on an action figure, I think I've got a pretty good way to celebrate the occasion.

Perhaps you recall that I first reported on a 12-inch Justice League Action Booster Gold figure from Target back in March? By June, I'd given up hope that we would ever actually see it in stores. I might have been premature.

Earlier this week, I got word that Mattel might finally be releasing the figure in 2018. While researching that claim yesterday, I found this on eBay.com:

I've still never seen one of these in the wild, but if this is the real deal (and there's no reason to suspect that it isn't), there must be others out there somewhere.

Keep your eyes peeled, Booster boosters! And Happy Birthday, Booster!

UPDATE 01/01/2018: The Blot notes that this figure is now available on Amazon.com for $13! Man, 2018 is looking Boosterrific already!

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