Happy Halloween! To celebrate the holiday, we DC comic book bloggers are banding together to give you what you want most: reviews of DC's "Ghosts" annuals from 1998! (What's that you say, you'd rather see more pics of hot chicks cosplaying? Hey, it wouldn't really be Halloween if we gave you what you really wanted, now would it?)

While Booster doesn't actually appear in any of the 1998 annuals, that's not going to stop me from joining in the ghoulish fun. Booster has encountered spiritual apparitions of the undead, including the time he led the Super Buddies to Hell to recover Ice in 2005's JLA Classified #6 and 7!

Ok, so it wasn't actually Booster's intention to rescue Ice from Hell. In fact, it hadn't been Booster's intention to go to Hell at all. Booster was just blowing off some steam when things got out of hand, and he accidentally wished the team to Hell. It wasn't Booster's finest moment.

Arguably, nothing about his time with the Super Buddies represents any of Booster's finest moments. Because Blue Beetle had something of a makeover in recent appearances in L.A.W. and Birds of Prey, Booster is used as comic relief and scapegoat for the duo. We Booster-philes may chafe at seeing Booster playing the fool, our raw feelings should be salved by the fact that he's doing it in support of his best friend.

Booster himself is surprisingly resilient to finding himself in Hell. This could be a psychological defense, or perhaps Booster is truly an atheist (as he himself stated as part of a punchline in 1988's Justice League International Annual #2). In any event, he remains skeptical when his friends encounter the apparition of their long-dead teammate, Ice (who died in 1994's Justice League Task Force #14).

Is she Ice, or isn't she? Is the team in Hell, or isn't it? The answers to these questions aren't immediately clear, and that very uncertainty is key to the psychological insecurity at the heart of this ghost story. No matter how you think about it, you don't have the answers. That's not a very comfortable position for anyone, much less heroes who are required to make split-second decisions with lives in the balance.

Published over a decade after their best work on Justice League International , this issue's mix of humor, action, and psychological drama is indicative of the best works of co-writers Keith Giffen and J.M. DeMatteis. If you like your super-hero comics not to fit within any easily definable genre, you'll find something to love in this issue.

If you're looking for something else spooky to pass the time on today, try something from one of these 17 other scary DC bloggers:

• "Ghosts" @ The Aquaman Shrine
• "Bough Breaks" @ Batman: Gotham Knights Online
• "Swamp Thing's Ghost Dance" @ The BLOG from the BOG - Swamp Thing
• "Life Itself" @ Captain's JLA Homepage
• "Ghosts' - The Corpse Corps!" @ Corps Conjecture
• "What Creeps Out The Creeper?" @ DC Bloodlines
• "The Distance Gone" @ Diana Prince is the New Wonder Woman
• "Shoe Shine.. Back from the Dead" @ Firestorm Fan
• "The Death Sentence" @ Great Krypton!
• "Happy Halloween" @ I Am The Phantom Stranger
• "Heart's Afire" @ The Idol-Head of Diabolu
• "Legend of Driq" @ Indigo Tribe
• "Role Model" @ Justice League Detroit
• "Ghosts" @ Power of the Atom
• "Zor" @ Siegel & Shuster: Mythmakers
• "High-Speed Hauntings" @ Speed Force
• "Ragman - Ripped to Shreds!" @ The Suit of Souls

Thanks to Chad Bokelman of corpsconjecture.blogspot.com for putting this crossover together.

Comments (2) | Add a Comment | Tags: blue beetle chad bokelman corpsconjecture.blogspot.com crossovers ghosts halloween holidays ice

Our hearts go out to those dealing with the remnants of Hurricane Sandy, which forced a record-breaking storm surge into New York City yesterday.

Please remember that the real superheroes are those helping others recover from Sandy, and treat them accordingly.

Comments (0) | Add a Comment | Tags: news weather

The cosplayers you are about to see will not be new to you, but hopefully these videos of their exploits will be.

This first video is from Lumberjack Films at New York Comic Con 2012. I know Aaron Wahl and his award-winning costume have been featured here twice before, but I just thought everyone might like to hear the details and see the whole costume in action. Also, in his interview in episode 33 of the Fire and Water Podcast, Dan Jurgens said that he has never seen a Booster Gold cosplayer with a flying Skeets. Someone please get this video to Mr. Jurgens' attention.

This second video by Distractotron is an assemblage of DC cosplayers from DragonCon 2012. I know that I have shown you Shelley as Booster Gold before, but there is something to be gleaned from the sheer multitude of cosplayers assembling for this photo shoot. I know that cosplayers make up a small minority of fandom, but they really represent well. Congratulations to all involved.

Comments (0) | Add a Comment | Tags: 2012 aaron wahl conventions cosplay costumes dan jurgens distractotron dragoncon fireandwaterpodcast.com lumberjack films nycc shelley skeets youtube.com

Remember when Booster Gold was given some bad advice by his trusted sidekick and lent his endorsement to Akteon-Holt pharmaceutical company? (See here for details.) Yeah, this story isn't quite that bad. Maybe it's more like that time that Fire destroyed Booster's plan to sell swimsuit calendars (as seen in Justice League America #71).

For reasons beyond my control, Cellbloc Studios has withdrawn our Kickstarter campaign for Dungeon Wars. There are certainly no super villains involved, just a bunch of well-intentioned people who realized too late that they were moving in the wrong direction in relation to one another.

We do plan to re-tool the game and re-launch a fundraising campaign as soon as we can, probably after Christmas. (As you might expect, Christmastime is a bad time of year to ask for donations for a start-up video game company.) We do have other plans and unexplored opportunities and hope to emerge from this situation stronger than before.

I would like to offer a hearty thank you to anyone who donated or had considered donating to the aborted Kickstarter campaign for Dungeon Wars. I hope that you will consider joining us when we relaunch our project in the future.

Comments (0) | Add a Comment | Tags: cellblocstudios.com dungeon wars kickstarter.com

I don't think I've ever run a poll that was so evenly divided at the top. Booster Gold: is there anything he's not qualified to do?

Last week's poll question: Which U.S. Cabinet position would Booster Gold be most likely to find himself in? (37 votes)

For a few weeks I've been asking specifically about Booster Gold's role in politics, but I'd like to look at the bigger picture this week. What role should the President play in the world of DC Comics, where super heroes run rampant often outside the purview of government?

More than a decade ago, Lex Luthor won the Presidency, and his villainous nature led to some very interesting stories. On the flip side, Superman is often teased as a presidential figure, a moral model for the nation. Now that DC has adopted more of the Marvel Comics model, where heroes aren't always right or held in reverence by the population at large, I wonder which of these roles better fits in the world now inhabited by Booster Gold.

Comments (0) | Add a Comment | Tags: politics polls