If you visit your Local Comic Shop today, you'll see that tradition holds true, with releases of books like Grayson Annual and Wonder Woman '77 Special. That's because today is the fifth comic-book release day in the month of September. DC has traditionally reserved these "fifth week" dates for the release of annuals and specials.

One such example is JLA In Crisis Secret Files, released on this date in 1998. Booster Gold doesn't play a very big part of this special. The late '90s were a fallow period for our hero. But any retrospective of Justice League history cannot help but include some Gold, even if only in a background role.

See anything funny about that panel? Booster looks like he's wearing swim briefs!

It's common for characters appearing in one-shot issues to look a little off-model. After all, the artists on these things wouldn't always be familiar with the characters they were drawing.

Prior to this panel, Darryl Banks had only drawn Booster as part of the large crowd attending the funeral of Green Lantern Hal Jordan. In that issue, Booster wore his Mark X armored power-suit.

We'll give Banks a pass for this snafu. Besides, the inker he was working with certainly had no idea what he was doing. It was the first time he'd ever worked on Booster Gold for DC Comics. His name was Norm Rapmund. I wonder whatever happened to that guy?

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Found by Morgenstern on Youtube: New World Comics presents the Death and Resurrection of Superman. Booster Gold shows up at about the 1:36 mark because you can't call it Doomsday without Booster Gold.

I love it. Who needs big budgets when you've got such great story and characters? ("You better get out of here before I mess up the me part of your face.")

Thanks to Morgenstern for passing it along. Bigger thanks to all involved at New World Comics for making it happen in the first place.

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Between Rip Hunter and Michelle Carter, if there's any hero who knows the power of family, it's Booster Gold. So you know when brothers can work together to create some art, it's going to be special.

This Booster Gold commission was created by brothers Brandon and Brian Fraim. You can see more of their work on their website, Fraimworks. (And if you're interested in seeing more of the JLI by the Brothers Fraim, visit Artfully DC, where I first spotted this image.)

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As anyone who saw Kevin Smith's Chasing Amy knows, a comic book inker is really just a tracer. But if you look at Showcase Presents Booster Gold, you can see how different "tracers" can influence the final product.

Booster Gold inked by Mike DeCarlo, Arne Starr, Ty Templeton, Robert Campanella

In addition to creating Booster Gold, Dan Jurgens drew every issue of Booster Gold volume 1. But he worked with many different inkers. Mike DeCarlo inked the book for the first year with several others, including Ty Templeton, finishing the run. This resulted in a variety of different looks for the character.

I wondered how much credit these inkers deserve for honing the visual identity of the character, so I put the question to Jurgens himself.

Booster's overall appearance, starting with the design of his costume, his general look, body language, expressiveness, etc.-- all those thing go into creating a definitive look. Far more so than the particulars of inking. For me, once I had the design I wanted, I think 90% of it was locked in.

Not to take anything away from Mike, who did a fine job, but I was doing fairly detailed pencils. Ty brought a sense of smoothness to the overall look of the book while Mike really gave the metallic portions of the uniform the look it needed. I really think that, like many things in life, each of the guys brought something good and different to the series.

Again-- that isn't to take anything away from anyone who worked on the book-- just a way of saying that far more goes into it than a simple question of who inked which issues.

It takes a village to raise a child, especially a troublesome child like Booster Gold.

Thanks to Dan Jurgens for providing so many nice images for others to trace, and thinks to Mike DeCarlo, Ty Templeton, and others to for turning Jurgens' images into our favorite comics.

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When I asked this 5 years ago, Booster Gold Volume 2 received 48% of the vote. It's only getting more popular over time.

Last week's poll question: Which era of Booster Gold has been your favorite? (58 votes)

While a lot of people are talking about the Booster Gold/Blue Beetle movie, we still don't even know which Blue Beetle it will be. Who do you want to see?

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