This week DC released The Return of Superman 30th Anniversary Special, which reunites Dan Jurgens and the other creators who made the original event such a compelling read that it's worth revisiting three decades later. I enjoyed reading it, but I am duty bound to point out that Booster Gold is not in that book.

Of course, longtime Booster boosters know that's an appropriate omission. At the time, Booster Gold's superhero career looked to be just as dead as Superman with no clear signs that he would ever be returning.

Doomsday destroyed Booster's original 25th-century powersuit in Superman #74 (written by Dan Jurgens), and Booster spent most of the 1993 summer of "Regin of the Superman" on the sidelines as the Justice League put itself back together under Wonder Woman's leadership. Superman would be back at work by October, but it would take Booster another 4 years before his powers were even close to the what they had been before. In fact, the restoration came exactly 50 months later, in Superman #124 (written by Dan Jurgens).

Which is not to say that Booster plays no role behind the scenes in The Return of Superman 30th Anniversary Special. The 2010 story "The Tomorrow Memory," beginning Booster Gold volume 2 #28 (written by guess who), establishes that Booster Gold, in his role as Time Master, was in Coast City while it was being destroyed by Cyborg Superman.... to ensure that it was destroyed.

That may not seem very "heroic," but without Booster Gold, Time Master, it's possible that no one would consider The Return of Superman worth revisiting 30 years later. Being a Time Master is a thankless job, but somebody's got to do it.

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So far as I can tell, time traveler Booster Gold has never appeared in a comic book released on the 11th day of September.

Coincidence? I think not.

"If Only," 9-11 - The World's Finest Comic Book Writers & Artists Tell Stories to Remember, 2002
by Dan Jurgens, Alan Davis, Robin Riggs, Mike Collins, Mark Farmer, Todd Klein, Lee Loughridge

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Dan Jurgens created the character of Booster Gold and has written and drawn most of Booster's adventures since 1985. However, Dan wasn't the only artist working on Booster's first appearance.

I would suggest that the most significant early artistic collaborator was Booster's original inker, Mike DeCarlo, who has drawn, inked, and/or colored hundreds of books for DC (and elsewhere) since the early 80s.

For those of us who have been with Booster since the beginning, DeCarlo's Booster certainly has a place in our heart. That's why I was so happy to see Cameron Lentz's commission of DeCarlo's distinctive take on young Booster Gold recently show up at ComicArtFans.com:

Yep, that's our Booster!

If you'd like to admire more of DeCarlo's Booster Gold inks, ComicArtFans.com also has the first appearance of the post-Crisis Superman from Booster Gold #6 story page 7, as well as Booster's origin story on pages 17, 18, 19, and 20 of that same issue.

With art like that, it's no wonder that we consider the issue to be one of the 12 Best Booster Gold Stories Ever!

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Nothing.

Specifically, I mean, we learned nothing about upcoming Booster Gold appearances and/or projects.

DC's slate of announcements were heavily biased towards Batman and Superman. That was to be expected, especially in the vacuum created by the simultaneous writers and actors guilds strikes that derailed any potential discussion of whatever James Gunn might be planning for his announced Booster Gold television show.

Considering that DC produced that shiny Booster Gold reprint that I just won't stop talking about (currently selling for about $75 on eBay), I'm sure they haven't entirely forgotten about our hero. Dan Jurgens will definitely be working on some Superman books in the near future. (Yet *another* 30th anniversary Death of Superman retrospective? That last one must have sold great! DCs going to keep killing Superman *forever*.) Maybe Booster Gold will pop up then.

Here's looking to the future.

UPDATE: Might as well append here that Booster Gold appears in no new comics in DC's October 2023 solicitations (as seen at AIPTComics.com). So... that's not encouraging. Thanks to Rob Snow for that news.

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And so at last we reach the end of Booster Gold Volume 1. It is, without a doubt, the ugliest of all 25 original issues.

Robert Campanella's inks are not a good fit for Dan Jurgens' pencils, and even most of Jurgens' layouts are subpar. Either this issue was rushed through editorial to fit the aggressive Millennium publishing schedule, or all the visual artists involved were in a hurry to move on to greener pastures. Maybe both.

(In my opinion, this issue is the only one in volume one that I think looks definitively superior in the often careless recolored digital reprints over the original newsprint publication.)

It's really a shame about the art, because the Dan Jurgens' script deserves better. It hits all the right notes as it forces Booster to face the down-side of publicity (in an American fast food restaurant) with a Communist providing outside perspective.

It also cleverly draws in the Justice League characters Booster is closest to while setting our hero up for a triumphant come-back in the future. Both of those latter elements factor into my favorite page of Booster Gold #25 (especially Beetle's lecture in panel 2):

Yeah! What Beetle said!

That's what I like so much about Booster Gold. His path meanders, but he always gets to the right place in the end.

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