My friend Michael likes attending DragonCon more than I like anything. He's finally recovered enough from his annual week of whatever it is one does at Dragon Con for a week to send me this pic of the only Booster Gold cosplayer he spotted this year:

I love the little Skeets on her shoulder, like a 25th-century parrot.

Thanks, Mike! (And thanks, cosplayer, whoever you are!)

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DC Comics' July 2022 solicitations are due out today, but Michael Doran of Newsarama@GamesRadar has already broken some Booster Gold news, specifically that our hero is going to start hunting vampires this summer.

cover art by Alan Quah

DC vs. Vampires: All-Out War #1 is a new six-issue "all-you-can-eat buffet of grindhouse mayhem" limited series beginning in July that serves as a companion series to the main DC vs. Vampire series, following the companion one-shots DC vs Vampires: Hunters in May and DC vs Vampires: Killers in June.

"One of the last secret, underground human cities is facing total annihilation and its leader - John Constantine - must plan a suicide mission to assassinate a key lieutenant in the vampire empire!" reads DC's description. "Against unreal odds and with an unlikely team including Booster Gold, Deathstroke, and Mary Marvel, does the Hellblazer have one more trick up his sleeve?"

DC vs. Vampires: All-Out War will be written by Matthew Rosenberg and Alex Paknadel with "monochromatic" black-and-white (!) art by Pasquale Qualano.

It's always cool that Booster Gold gets more spotlight, but if the main DC vs. Vampires mini-series is any guide, most of these characters are just going to die very gruesome deaths at the hands of other fallen heroes. If vampires can turn the likes of Wonder Woman and Superman, I don't much care for Booster Gold's chances. (How did he not see this coming?)

Will Booster be seen anywhere else in the DCU in July, perhaps in a book that isn't so... bloodthirsty? I'll certainly be checking GamesRadar.com for updates later today.

UPDATE LATER TODAY: Whoo, boy, it looks like DC really doesn't know what direction it wants to take its properties this summer. An endless series of Dark Crises, Flashpoints, and multiverses of Superman and mechs and vampires and knights and children.... Maybe I'm just getting too old for this.

On the up side, Booster Gold does appear on the solicited cover for Superman: Son of Kal-El #13 by Travis Moore.

The issue is teased to introduce the television Arrowverse's Dreamer to the DCU (whatever that means anymore), so when it arrives in your Local Comic Shop on July 12, expect it to be a big seller to television watchers who also buy comic books... all 15 of them.

Now get off my lawn.

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You probably already have your Halloween costume ready, but just as a reminder, dressing as Booster Gold is always an option.

The above unidentified Booster Gold cosplayer was photographed by Michael Foster at DragonCon 2021. If that's you, let me know so that I can give you credit.

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Look who makes a cameo appearance in today's Justice League #67:

Er, I meant specifically Booster Gold. He's in the background of several panels, which, frankly, is a bigger presence than he has in most comic books. And at least he's in good company. Vixen and Blue Devil are also here to mutely decorate the backgrounds, and few characters are given any more than a single line of dialog. What you see from longtime League stalwarts Black Canary and Green Arrow above is their only notable contribution to the proceedings. If the Justice League roster needs to include someone with a colorful name to stand around and state the obvious, Booster Gold can do that!

Look, I'm not going to lie. As you can probably tell by now, I don't personally care for Brian Michael Bendis's take on the Justice League. The unique quirks of his personal style aside, his characters don't act much like the DC heroes I've been reading about for decades. I find myself reading his issues as though they represent an alternate-universe team that, while far from "ultimate," could perhaps occupy Earth-B.

(Historical footnote: In the Bronze Age of DC Comics, Earth-B was the unofficial universe of writer Bob Haney's impossible, out-of-continuity Brave and the Bold stories. That universe was presumably destroyed by the Crisis on Infinite Earths. I suggest the new Earth-B in DC's all-new, all-different post-52, post-Death Metal Omniverse cosmology should be home to the stories of Brian Bendis.)

So I can't exactly recommend this title to anyone. But we readers don't get to choose which books Booster Gold appears in, do we? As a great poet once said, "Ours not to reason why, ours but to whine and buy."

Buy this issue and make Skeets happy.

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Friend of Boosterrific ("F.O.B") Mike Foster took me to task for spending last Wednesday teasing Green Arrow when I should have been focused the latest Gold Beetle appearance as seen in this panel from that week's Green Lantern #2:

words by Geoffrey Thorne, art by Dexter Soy, Marco Santucci, Alex Sinclair

Exactly why Gold Beetle appears to be handcuffed is unclear, as this panel is her only appearance in this issue. Perhaps the "present day" Time Masters have finally taken notice of her recent shenanigans in Future State: Suicide Squad #1 and #2 and Flash #768 and #769.

By the way, this would seem to be Gold Beetle's first canonical (objectively documented) meeting with Rip Hunter and Waverider, her previously reported encounter with the "Linear Police" being merely anecdotal (as told by her) and apocryphal (because she's the very definition of an unreliable narrator). Good luck finding a game show that will ask for *that* thinly-sliced bit of comic book trivia.

At the rate Gold Beetle is popping up across DC's new Infinite Frontier, it's only a matter of time (har, har) before she finally comes face to face with Booster Gold and Blue Beetle themselves, maybe in this summer's Blue and Gold mini-series that everyone I won't stop talking about.

Thanks for the correction, Mike.

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