Yesterday, we saw that Geoff Johns told us to ask Dan DiDio when we'd be getting a new Booster Gold comic. So Booster booster Gio3432 did just that on Twitter.

And he got the following answer:

I like that answer. Really, it's just as ambiguous as Johns' answer was, but "working on it" is much more comforting to hear than "Buster who?"

Thanks for the update, Gio! (Gio3432 posted the news in the Boosterrific Forum yesterday).

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The big Booster Gold news from Comic-Con International is that there is no Booster Gold slated to appear in DC Comics.

Booster was discussed at the "DC All-Access Panel" on Thursday. (Panelists included Mark Buckingham, Brian Buccellato, Derek Fridolfs, Adam Hughes, Geoff Johns, Jeff Lemire, Gail Simone, and Tom Taylor.) It's interesting to see how different sources covered the same news.

First up is Zac Boone of Unleash the Fanboy:

A Booster Gold cos-player asked when he will get his title back. Answers were noncommital.

Andy Hunsacker of Crave Online expands:

A Booster Gold cosplayer asks when Booster Gold's getting his book back. They joke that he's from the future, he should already know.

The same event covered by Mark Seifert for Bleeding Cool:

When asked about the rumoured Booster Gold monthly [Geoff Johns] dodged the question and stated that he wasn't allowed to say much but to talk to Dan Didio.

From these three reports we can be sure of two things:

1. most of the people who attend these panels report for comics websites, and
2. DC isn't ready to admit that there is a Booster Gold comic in the works.

This doesn't necessarily discredit Bleeding Cool's earlier report in May that a third volume of Booster Gold comic was "imminent," but it doesn't help their credibility either.

As if that's not enough bad Booster news, Lucas Siegel of Newsarama also confirmed that Booster will not be appearing in "Trinity War."

Any plans for Booster Gold? [Geoff] Johns, "We love Booster, but he's not in Trinity War. There is something in Forever Evil #1 that connects to him though."

The silver lining is that Booster Gold fans can save some money and stop buying the "Trinity War" crossovers now. See, Comic-Con wasn't a total waste.

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If you haven't heard the news yet, Scott Johnson over at ComicBook.com has found an Easter Egg in the latest Man of Steel trailer. As you might have guessed from seeing it referenced here, it's Booster Gold related.

At the two minute and twenty-seven second mark in the third Man Of Steel trailer, Superman and General Zod are shown flying directly at each other with the Metropolis skyline in the background.

In the Metropolis skyline, there is a building with a blurry yellow and white neon sign. Comicbook.com blew up a hi-res version of the image, and the blurry yellow and white sign is actually for "Blaze Comics." In DC Comics, Blaze Comics is the comic book publisher that publishes the Booster Gold comic book series.

Johnson goes on to speculate about what this news might mean and why Blaze Comics was chosen for inclusion. I'm just happy that Booster has found a way to crash Superman's movie.

Elsewhere on the Internet, Geoff Johns told Steve "Frosty" Weintraub at Collider.com that the Booster Gold television project isn't officially dead yet.

Booster Gold TV series: still in development, Andrew Kreisberg is working on it right now.

"Still in development" isn't really revealing very much, but at least it's better than "not still in development!" Is the show headed somewhere other than SyFy, which didn't even mention it in their 2014 upfronts last month? Skeets' fins are crossed that the show comes to TV sooner rather than later!

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Last week, in regards to sales of Justice League of America, I said, "I suspect that since DC isn't crowing about how great [sales] have been, they can't find anything to crow about." Looks like I was very, very wrong.

According to Comichron.com, Justice League of America and its 53 covers was the best selling book for the month of February... since 1996!

Comichron goes on to note that this book even outsold Superman: The Wedding Album (November 1996), the previous best-seller since DC signed an exclusive distribution agreement with Diamond Comics Distributors in 1995. That's great news for Booster Gold fans, who saw their hero get his first in-continuity reference in months.

(Aside: For years, a good friend of mine who has owned a comic book store since the early 1990s had several unopened cartons of "white-bagged" Superman: The Wedding Album in his basement. It took him the better part of two decades to unload the unwanted issues that the hype following Death of Superman had lured him into over-ordering. I still tease him about that overly-ambitious order. Needless to say, his order for Justice League of America was much more conservative.)

While Justice League of America sold better than all comics in recent memory, there is ample evidence to suggest that fans were buying for the "53 covers!" gimmick, not the concept itself. Over at ComicBook.com, Russ Burlingame points out that Katana and Vibe, the tie-in series to JLoS, sold comparatively poorly at #80 and #78 respectively for the month. This a surprise, especially considering their pedigrees. Burlingame notes:

It's been a long time since [writer Geoff] Johns launched a title that debuted out of the top 50; back in 2007, Booster Gold came in at #58....

As we know, Booster Gold was cancelled after 4 years, but mainly because of Flashpoint. (Yes, sales were falling, but the title would indisputably have reached #50 if not for the Great Random Reboot of 2011.) What are the odds that Johns' latest series, Vibe, makes it even half that long?

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If you missed it, the big news from DC yesterday was the announcement that Justice League of America, the title that Geoff Johns has teased will feature the eventual return of Booster Gold to DCnU continuity, will hit stands in February alongside its own spin-offs, Katana and Vibe. Russ Burlingame has the info on the Booster Gold-Andrew Kreisberg-Vibe connection at ComicBook.com.

To ensure that this Justice League book -- featuring a team without a Flash, Superman, or Wonder Woman much like the now-cancelled Justice League International -- is a sales success, DC plans to cheat the market. In addition to the standard cover, the book will be published with 52 variant covers: one for each state in the union, plus the territories of the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. That's a total of 53 covers. Fifty-three! I pause here for emphasis.

Let's be frank: the purpose of variant covers is to promote sales via an artificial scarcity. If an issue has a variant cover printed in limited quantities, some collectors will buy an extra copy for the sake of maintaining a comprehensive collection. Some speculators will seek out the variants hoping that their relative scarcity will lead to a long-term increase in value. Whatever your opinion on the morality of this marketing strategy, it cannot be denied that variant covers do increase sales.

Is DC genuinely hoping that completists or speculators out there will try to acquire all 53 covers? Of course they are. By allowing retailers to order each of the 52 variants as a separate issue, the company is obviously hoping that each direct market retailer spends a small fortune trying to acquire at least a few of each cover to appease those collectors and speculators.

(It seems to me that DC is specifically targeting the direct market with this stunt. I've never seen any evidence that variant covers increase sales of digital editions, where "collecting" and "speculating" have little meaning.)

There must be a limit to the variant cover sales response, and I would expect it to be something less than 53. Consider that if you were to buy one of each at cover price, the total at the register will be $211.47 before tax. That's a lot of cash for just one issue. Compare that to the hardcover 52 Omnibus due out next week that will reprint all 52 issues of 2007's 52 series. Unlike the stack of variant covers for Justice League of America #1, the 52 comics included in the $150 Omnibus will at least tell a complete story.

There is no word yet whether Booster Gold will be seen in the series' first issue. If he is, I might consider buying 53 copies. But only if he is.

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