The unexpected Booster Gold appearances just keep coming! Pigeon has alerted me to a Booster Gold shirt found on eBay that uses the final splash page of Dan Jurgens/Rick Burchett art from Justice League America #69 for a whole t-shirt.

Yeah, that's not a great picture, but I was trying to grab a snap from boostergoldirl via instagram.com that I could horizontally flip. (Why is everything backwards on social media these days? Cameras aren't mirrors.) There are better pics on the original eBay listing, so long as eBay keeps them up.

Sublimation t-shirts were all the rage in the early 90s, but I've seen no indication that DC Comics ever authorized such a thing as this. Googling and image searching the label reveal nothing, and no copyright info appears on the shirt itself, so I'm currently categorizing it as a bootleg. A very, very cool bootleg.

Congrats on the find, Pigeon.

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Over the weekend FZ writes, "Found a poster you might not be aware of!"

That's obviously an in-store promotional poster for Justice League Spectacular from 1992, currently listed for sale on eBay by Knight Street Comics.

And FZ is right. I had not seen that before. The question now is what do I do with this new information?

Boosterrific does have a listing of officially licensed DC posters including Booster Gold appearances (including the one seen on the above poster) here. However, this particular poster is really more of an advertisement and would not have been available to the general public. Do I add this to the posters list anyway? Or do I just leave it here on the blog, which is the catch-all for things I don't know where else to put.

I'm currently thinking the latter, but if you feel differently, let me know. Thanks, FZ.

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In 2018, the Blot introduced us to the Booster Gold Ooshie.

Now Blot is back with more "Booshie" news!

So a few years ago I wrote in to tell you about the Booster Gold Ooshies figure, which was included in the DC Comics Ooshies line of collectible pencil / pen toppers. What I didn't know until recently is they also released two exclusive variants. So technically there are some new production Booster Gold figures in the world!

The Gold Booster was exclusive to the 2022 DC Oooshies Advent Calendar, which as best as I can tell was sold exclusively at Big Lots. While I was trying to find that figure on eBay I also stumbled upon the Silver Booster, but can’t find any information about it. This one was misnamed by a seller in China, possibly coming off the factory floor as a sample. Can't find any series or sets that included a silver Booster Gold. Happy hunting to all the Booster Gold collectors out there wanting to add these to their collections!

Looking back at other Ooshie offerings, it seems they offered rare "titanium" chase variants of some figures, so maybe that explains the silver treatment?

Whatever the case, I'm not particularly surprised that a Chinese eBay seller didn't recognize The Greatest Hero You've Never Heard Of. Good find, Blot!

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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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