Released on July 15, 2009: Blackest Night #1.

Blackest Night is a story about heroes coming back from the dead, but it would take the "rebirth" of the entire DCU (in 2016's appropriately named DC Universe Rebirth #1) to actually bring Ted Kord back to life.

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Independence Day weekend is a great time to hit the beach! So grab your towel and join Blue Beetle and Booster Gold on page 5 of Justice League America #33:

Let the hijinks begin!

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Justice League Europe #8 is the final chapter of the four-part "Teasdale Imperative." As with the previous three parts, Booster Gold doesn't have much to do here other than crack wise, but I absolutely love his body language on page 9 as both branches of the Justice League International witness a giant Grey Man erupt through the roof of the Stagg Industries industrial zombie-juice processing plant like Animal in The Muppet Movie.

It's just another day at the office for Booster Gold. He practically specializes in stopping rampaging giant gray monsters!

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Almost all of Booster Gold's dialogue in Justice League America #32 is some sort of snarky comment on something one of his teammates has said. And that's why we love him!

Weirdly, Adam Hughes' art shows Booster's hair parted on his right side on this page, page 8, when it is parted on his left side (where character creator Dan Jurgens typically places the part) on pages 5 and 18. While that might lead you to believe that this page was flipped in production, the opposite is actually true. The original art for page 18 can be seen on ComicArtFans.com, making it clear that the Booster Gold/Blue Beetle/Fire panel was flipped on that page. I cannot find art for page 5 online, but I assume it was flipped there as well?

For the record, Booster Gold's part moved from side to side frequently during Kevin Maguire's time on the Justice League International, but Hughes will keep it pretty consistently on Booster's right side for the next few years.

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Arriving this week in a Local Comic Shop near you is the third (and final?) volume of the Justice League International Omnibus.

According to the solicitation, this issue (with a brand new wraparound cover by Kevin Maguire) reprints "stories from Justice League America #51-60, Secret Origins #33-35, Justice League America Annual #5, Green Lantern #18, Justice League Quarterly #2-5, JLA 80-Page Giant #1, Formerly Known as the Justice League #1-6, JLA: Classified #4-9, Justice League Europe #26-36, DC Retroactive: JLA - The '90s #1, Justice League Europe Annual #2, and Justice League International Special #2."

It's funny: when you're reading them as you go along, they didn't seem like so many comics, but in hindsight, that's a heck of a long list.

That's at least part of 46 different comics, which pretty much A) justifies the $150 price tag, and B) puts a cap on the Giffen/DeMatteis era (with the exception of Justice League 3000-3001, which is collected elsewhere).

And the best part is that it excludes the JLI's appearances under the pens of other writers, so if we want to, we can all just pretend that Identity Crisis and Countdown to Infinite Crisis never happened. I can live with that.

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