I was looking through DC's December solicitations at ComicsBeat.com this weekend when I spotted the 1:25 retailer incentive variant cover by Jeff Spokes for Human Target #10 featuring the Justice League International:

That's the only revealed cover coming in December with Booster on it. And I might consider buying it... if I can't get the regular edition with stunning Greg Smallwood art showcasing G'Nort for 1/5 the price. (Sorry, DC, but I'm not made of money. Have you seen how much comic books cost these days?)

The solicitations don't make it clear if Booster is inside any of the books, but Dan Jurgens will be handling some art on the Dark Crisis follow-up, Big Bang #1, so maybe there. We'll find out when the book comes to your Local Comic Shop on December 13.

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You know, for someone who says I don't like Tom King's work, I somehow dedicate a lot of space on this blog to him. What can I say? The guy's just kind of hard to ignore, especially when he tweets things like this:

That's the book cover under the dust jacket of the Human Target Volume 1 hardcover coming our way September 27. Yeah, we've seen that art before — it was created by Greg Smallwood for the interior of Human Target #1. But it's still Boosterrific no matter how many times we see it.

While I'm on the topic, this would seem to be a great time to mention that Russ Burlingame has an exclusive interview with Tom King in The Gold Exchange: The Boosterrific Deluxe Edition. With Russ's permission, I'm quoting starting from page 594 here:

Burlingame: You said earlier that you write Booster "wrong." That feels like a healthy way of internalizing audience feedback, just to crack the joke and say "I know 30% of everyone reading this are going to bitch, and that's fine."

King: I mean, I say "right" and "wrong," but I wouldn't change the way that I write. I just wrote Booster for Human Target, and I loved how those pages turned out. Yeah, my Booster's a little goofier and a little sillier, and I know it's not going to please everyone, but it's my job to make the best product I can, and that's the best product I see.

If I'm just trying to write the way everyone wants me to write, then I'll write crappy. I know it's going to turn out worse if I try to do it the other way.

My general opinion is that there are a lot of superheroes who are super-competent and super good in the DC Universe, and it's nice to have one who's not that way. It's what makes him interesting and funny. It's nice to have a guy who can make jokes, and that when you read him, it can make you laugh. That's what I like about Booster; he's not like all the other superheroes.

To me, it's the difference between what Iron Man was up until Robert Downey, Jr. and what he is now. He was just a generic, boring guy, and yeah, he had alcoholism, but that was basically it. And then Robert Downey, Jr. came along, and it was like, "What if we made this guy so arrogant it was funny?" And then we're like, "Oh, yeah. Now he's a [effing] great character."

Burlingame: In Human Target, it isn't just Booster, but the entire Justice League International. Do you approach Booster a little differently as part of that unit?

King: I knew I was taking the Keith Giffen/JLI version as opposed to the Dan Jurgens, more heroic version. I wanted to make sure I had it down, so I talked to Dan about it and he was like, "Well, Booster is a guy who doesn't mind making money off being a superhero," so I wanted to make a thing where he was making money off being a superhero, so I put Booster's Bagels in there.

I just started to put captions back in my writing. I haven't used captions since The Vision, so that's like seven years without captions. The whole point of Human Target is, he goes through each JLI member and kind of cuts to the core of them at some point and says why they're awesome, or what's at their heart. So it gave me a chance, using Chance's voice, to say what I love about the character.

So Booster is Booster. And "Yeah, Booster's a joke, but aren't they all? At least this one's funny" is I think his great Booster line.

We can agree on that, at least. Booster Gold *is* funny.

Thanks for the interview (and the book), Russ!

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Tales of the Human Target #1 (of 1) will be available tomorrow at your Local Comic Shop. According to the solicitation text:

Chance teams up with fan-favorite members of the JLI in four connecting mysteries that lead them to that fateful day when one them will kill the Human Target.

Taken literally, that means that the Big Bad of the series is one of the JLI characters featured in the issue, either Fire, Ice, Guy Gardner, or Booster Gold. DC played this same "one of these heroes is a murderer!" with Tom King's Heroes in Crisis in 2018 and have done nothing but bend over backwards to undo it ever since. Glad to see they've learned a lesson from that debacle.

(To be fair to King, he doesn't write the solicitation text. He just, you know, makes heroes into murderers.)

As usual, the stars of a Tom King project are the amazing visual artists DC teams with him. In this case, it's Kevin Maguire and Alex Sinclair on the Booster story, but you can see Greg Smallwood also gets a chance to draw Gold in the issue preview at AIPTComics.com.

As if that wasn't enough great art, keep in mind that a piece of Booster appears on the David Marquez open order variant Cover B.

Yeah, I'm certainly not going to complain about that.

Buy this issue and make Skeets happy.

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Tales of the Human Target is due to arrive in your Local Comic Shop next week, on August 23. Tales is an anthology book, with stories featuring Guy Gardner, Fire, and Booster Gold. According to Newsarama @ gamesradar.com, Booster Gold was chosen because that's who Kevin Maguire wanted to draw. I'm very much okay with that.

That Newsarama article hyperlinked above is an interview between Grant DeAmitt and Tom King about a whole bunch of Human Target-related stuff. Importantly for Booster boosters, it includes an on-the-record discussion about why King keeps putting a dumbed-down version of Booster Gold in his stories:

Nrama: Okay, moving on, the next character that's in Tales is Booster Gold.

King: My favorite character in comics. I love writing him.

Nrama: Oh yeah?

King: I tell Dan Jurgens all the time, 'thank you for creating this character.' Even if I write him a little differently than Dan would write him, because Dan writes him a little smarter than I write him. I write him a little more goofy. But I love that sort of goofiness of him.

Nrama: Is that what attracts you to the character? The goofiness?

King: There are two things that attract me. Number one, I write these tragic, sad things. I never get to write funny. I love writing funny. I love comedy. It's a chance to get into that. And yeah, there's this like, don't tell anybody this, but I base him kind of on Futurama, on Zapp Brannigan and Kiff. You know how Skeets is his partner who, like, loves him and hates him at the same time? I love that.

I also love — this is the thing I got from Jurgens. What Jurgens understands about this character is, that in the end, Booster does the right thing and doesn't get credit for it. He's the superhero who's like, yes, he first thinks of himself. Yes, he first thinks of money. Yes, he's a goofball. But at the end of the day, he's really a really good person. He really is self-sacrificial. But just because of all that other bravado stuff, nobody gets to see that part of it. He's one of the nicest, best heroes in the DC Universe. Everyone assumes that because he's a goofball, he's not good. And I love that about him.

Nrama: So in the beginning of Tales, when he has that monologue about being just like Superman, he's actually right? He's closer to Superman than we give him credit for.

King: People forget that in 52, the big DC event, he was the Superman for a time. A character called Supernova. So again, you read that and you're laughing at him, but there is something in him that's just a little Superman.

The craziest part about Booster is that he had the stupidest plan in the world. He's like, I'm going to go into the past. I'm going to steal a bunch of tech and go back and be a superhero. And then he actually did it! He executed the stupidest plan, and it worked! There's something Brave and Bold about that.

Futurama? Really?

That said, all jokes — and my personal appreciation for King's ouevre — aside, I don't want to discourage anyone from enjoying Booster Gold for whatever reason they find to enjoy him, even if their reason isn't mine.

Live and let Booster Gold.

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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.

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