I'm reminding you to visit to your Local Comic Shop today, because I know you're going to want to get your hands on Harley Quinn #71 with Booster Gold (and Skeets!) on the cover.

What do you think about that old-school Booster Gold logo? I like it, 'natch.

BleedingCool.com has the preview. Your LCS has the issue.

And while you're there, consider grabbing a copy of Flash #750. Logan Peterson has gotten an early look and says Booster makes an appearance there, too. Thanks, Logan.

Buy these issues and make Skeets happy!

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Friday afternoon, The Hollywood Reporter broke the news that DC finally plans to release their comprehensive Rebirth continuity in 2020. That's a mere 9 years after they threw out decades of character development in a bid to boost sales.

"We're starting to figure out how continuity works," [DC Comics co-publisher Dan] DiDio said about the process, noting that reboots and complicated retcons are what happens when "things stop making sense."

I'm glad that DiDio, who has overseen DC Comics' output since 2004, has finally realized the value of continuity to the types of stories that his company sells. Better late than never, I guess.

Anyway, I'm sure that what you want to know, as a visitor to a Booster Gold fan site, is "how will this affect Booster Gold?" The answer looks to be: Pretty significantly.

DiDio made the announcement at the "DC Nation" panel of this past weekend's New York Comic Convention accompanied with an illustrated graphic. Bleeding Cool spent most of the weekend pouring over the visible bits of that timeline. I can't make out anything, but Rich Johnston seems to think it restores most of the post-Crisis on Infinite Earths continuity as the third generation of DC heroes.

If that is to be believed, it looks like Booster Gold's history once again includes his joining the original "Bwah-ha-ha" Justice League International alongside Blue Beetle. Also restored: Infinite Crisis and Justice League: Generation Lost. Is there time for 52 to have happened in there somewhere? One can only hope.

Will any of this ever make it to print? Will the short-lived New 52 continuity be abandoned? How can Convergence be shoehorned into this new chronology? Who knows. Maybe we'll find out after Doomsday Clock finally ticks down in December.

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When last we left our hero, Booster Gold was getting sucker-punched by Flash in Heroes in Crisis #2.

I hope we'll find out if Booster's jaw is stronger than it looks in Heroes in Crisis #3, on sale today!

You can find a preview of the issue at JoBlo.com.

(By the way, over the weekend BleedingCool.com "reported" that Booster isn't the Sanctuary Killer. So if you can trust a gossip site, well, then, I'm sure you feel much better now.)

Buy this issue and make Skeets happy!

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On this day in 2003, DC Comics began publication of JLA-Z, a Who's Who-inspired excuse for a pin-up anthology of Justice League characters. Booster Gold and Blue Beetle were judged so important to the history of the JLA that they appeared in the very first issue!

(It probably didn't hurt that their codenames both begin with the second letter of the alphabet.)

Art by Kevin Maguire, Joe Rubinstein, Tom McCraw.

On a related note, BleedingCool.com reports from Fan Expo Canada that Ted Kord might be rejoining the Justice League in some capacity in the near future. The sooner the better, if you ask me.

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I'd like to stop talking about the recent Batman story "The Gift", really I would. I'd like to file the three issues away in my longboxes and forget it was ever published. But it seems Tom King doesn't want to let me do that.

Please, no.

#BEGIN RANT (Warning: rant may contain spoilers)

I'm not intimately familiar with King's entire body of work, but I find it unlikely he's grown as popular as he is if all of his stories are as carelessly crafted as "The Gift."

The premise is laughably bad, an idea that should have been left on the back of whatever cocktail napkin King first jotted it on. How, exactly, is changing time to prevent the wedding of Batman and Catwoman supposed to be a gift? What kind of person would choose a vague dream over the lives of two loving parents? What kind of person would expect someone else to? Booster Gold was a former member of the Justice League, not a super villain. The excuse of immaturity can only be stretched so far.

The conclusion is no better. It's the worst kind of time travel plot device, where the resolution invalidates everything that came before. The Booster Gold who has been tortured by Bruce Wayne for the previous year can no longer exist. How can any Booster remember an event which never happened? (By the way, what happened to the corpse of the impossible Bruce Wayne? Or Skeets? Or the "other" Booster Gold? Damn this rabbit hole!) The resolution of "The Gift," as nonsensical as it is, makes it clear that its events can only affect one character (at most), and that character wasn't even the guy whose name is on the cover. If King hadn't tweeted otherwise, I would have assumed this story was filler so the wedding could take place in an issue with a nice, round number.

Speaking of Batman, he comes off just as poorly as Booster Gold does. As I wrote back in April, King ostensibly set out to recreate Alan Moore's "For The Man Who Has Everything..." by showing that the world was a worse place without Batman. However, instead of affirming the heroic value of one of the most popular fictional characters of all time, King instead successfully invalidates another of Moore's stories, The Killing Joke. In the end, all it takes is "one bad day" for Bruce Wayne to become a gun-toting murderer. Was that the goal, to demonstrate not that the world is better with Batman in it but that *Batman* is a better person because his parents died young? Unlike Booster, who King treats as a brain-dead court jester, Batman should be deserving of some respect. But no, his character is dragged through just as much mud.

If this story is any indication, King clearly cares nothing for characterization. Any excuse to write a feral Catwoman who kills for no apparent reason or a Batman who shoots first and asks questions never. (Or worse, Green Lanterns who shoot themselves in the head on a dare.) Judging by the quote above, I'm guessing that King intentionally ignored years of character development so that Booster Gold would be in position for that other story he wants to tell. Otherwise he certainly went out of his way to mangle some beloved characters for no obvious reason.

#END RANT

Maybe you were one of those people who who read "The Gift" and liked it. More power to you. In that case, perhaps you'd like to hear what BleedingCool.com has to speculate about this announcement.

Personally, I found the ridiculous premise, careless resolution, and misguided characterization insulting to some characters and artists I'm actually quite fond of. If "The Gift" is any indication of the kind of story that King likes to write, I'd prefer that he left Booster Gold on the sidelines instead.

FOOTNOTE 2018-05-18:

I'm guessing... lobotomy? (As I said above, "the excuse of immaturity can only be stretched so far.")

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