Last week's featured book, Booster Gold #23, was just one of three comics with significant Booster Gold content released on September 15, 1987.

The second is Millennium #1, the first entry in a months-long event that would span the entire DC Universe. If you are familiar with Millennium, you are probably aware that it is... not especially beloved, largely because of the editorial mandate that each series being published had to tie-in, often in the most ham-fisted ways possible.

Especially in relation to Booster Gold.

But that's not the topic at hand. Even misguided comics can have fun pages. A highlight of events like these is always seeing all the heroes milling around as though they were regular partygoers at a costume party, like this crowd scene from page 14.

It's actually kind of difficult to make these overcrowded group shots work as anything other than a class photo, but here artist Joe Staton and letterer Bob Lappan manage to give the scene some life as the dialog trickles back and forth down the page. Each snippet of conversation gives the impression that we're eavesdropping on natural dialog just as the camera comes to focus on the talker (or thinker, as the case may be).

Most importantly, Booster boosters are guaranteed to enjoy a callback to the running joke of people calling our hero "Buster." It's a classic!

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Take heart, Booster boosters! Cort Carpenter has filled the gap of new Booster Gold art this week by sharing with us his latest sketchbook commissions.

Soo Lee

Bob McLeod

Ryan Kelly

By my count, Cort has now shared with us more than 67 pieces of commissioned Booster Gold art (many of which you can see larger on Cort's Twitter and imgur accounts). I don't know how he affords them all. Maybe he's a secret billionaire. All the best superheroes are, you know.

In his email, Cort teased the possibility that he may have as many as five new commissions to share with us before the end of the year. I think you'll agree that gives all Booster boosters something to look forward to.

Thanks, Cort!

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It seems Covid-19 has stopped the whole world cold, but not Cort Carpenter. He is making up for the canceled comics conventions by commissioning copious creators to craft compositions of the one and only Corporate Crusader, Booster Gold!

(Sorry, I might be going stir crazy. Just enjoy the art.)

Lanna Souvanny

Aaron Lopresti

Bob Layton

And, drum roll please....

Creator of Booster Gold, Dan Jurgens

See all of these and more embiggened at imgur.com.

Thanks, Cort! (And Stay safe everybody.)

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San Diego Comic Con was this past weekend, and it would have been the perfect time for DC Comics to leverage Booster Gold's recent starring role in Heroes in Crisis into some new material. So what, if anything, did we learn about Booster Gold this year? Not much.

Let us count the ways.

1. Tom King continues to miss the point of how bad Heroes in Crisis was.

At the show, Tom King was awarded the 2019 Best Writer Eisner Award for Batman, Mister Miracle, Heroes in Crisis, Swamp Thing Winter Special. Congratulations to him. As much as I complain about his writing, he seems like a decent guy. But please, Tom, never write Booster Gold again, especially since you don't seem to understand (or maybe, to accept) the weaknesses in your stories as published.

Per Newsarama.com's coverage of the Tom King panel:

"I loved [HiC]," said King. "I think killing Wally was a tough pill for people to swallow." ... King says Wally did not actually murder anyone, and to him, Wally is the hero of Heroes In Crisis.

I really don't mean to rip the band-aid off the nightmare that was Heroes in Crisis (unquestionably the worst comic series I've read in the past 12 months), but if King is going to be rewarded for mischaracterization in pursuit of whatever it was he thinks he was doing in that story, I can't keep quiet.

Wally may not be a "villain" in a traditional comic-book-morality sense, but who tried to cover up an accident by framing other heroes? Who stole from his "friends"? Who took steps to reveal the secret identities of the Justice League to the public? Who was planning to commit murder of his future self? That would be the villain of the piece: Wally West.

The moral of Heroes in Crisis isn't that sometimes bad things happen to good people; it's.... Hell, I still don't know what the moral is, but I'm sure it isn't "if you're having a bad day, go ahead and frame your friends for murder."

Meanwhile, who was it that fought to find the truth despite a public manhunt against him? And who turned his friends for support when he needed help most? And who managed to avoid the worst possible outcome? That would be the hero of the story: Booster Gold.

Maybe the moral is that real heroes don't get the credit they deserve for their bravery, determination, and compassion. Yeah, maybe that's it.

2. Booster Gold will make at least a cameo appearance in Batman: Last Knight on Earth #2.

The Blot wasn't at Comic Con this year, but he did spot our hero in Twitter.com coverage of the DC Black Label panel featuring artwork for the coming book. See if you've got better eyes than The Blot. (I don't.)

That's kind of small. Here's the half with Booster.

Need a little more? Ok, here he is standing in front of... Evil Star, maybe?

You'll find Batman: Last Knight on Earth #2, with art by Greg Capullo, in your Local Comic Shop next week.

3. You can read all of Booster Gold volume 1 on the DC All Access mobile app.

Okay, fine. This wasn't actually announced at SDCC, but it should have been.

This news about the DC Comics All Access App actually came to my inbox this weekend by way of an update from Bob Rossetto, who originally alerted us to the app's Gold deficiency back in September 2018. I'm very pleased that DC has finally fixed that oversight and made Booster more widely available to new audiences. Hooray!

Thanks to Blot and Bob both.

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Now that the final chapter of Heroes in Crisis has been written, I'm of the general impression that the less said about it, the better.

(Right now, I never want to read a DC comic book again. Maybe by Monday, I'll be in a better mood.)

While I'm recovering from my own personal trauma, enjoy this delightful sketch of Bing Crosby and Bob Hope as Booster Gold and Blue Beetle drawn by Joe Phillips in the style of Al Hirschfeld tweeted by @DrPopCultureBG.

Sigh. I still love you, high collar. (And I'm tickled pink by the thought of Booster wearing one of Bing's rugs.)

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