DC Comics released solicitations for November 2017 earlier this week. If you don't already have it in digital or floppy form, you'll soon have a third chance to see Booster's final, one-panel cameo appearance in Smallville continuity courtesy of the aptly-titled Smallville Season Eleven Volume 9: Continuity. That looks like about our only chance to see our hero in November. My question is "Why?"

Let's look at the bigger picture. Based on available numbers assembled by ComcisBeat.com and ComicChron.com, DC Universe titles have seen hard copy periodical sales fall by more than 21% over the past decade (and more than 42% since Rebirth's initial bump). Trade collections prop those numbers up slightly (adding 2% in either case), but not nearly enough to cover the full difference. Do digital sales make up that shortfall, or it simply a case that fewer people care to read DCnU titles these days? I certainly don't, and the primary reason is the continued absence of one particular character. (Hint, hint.)

DC doesn't exactly look to be taking that bad news lying down. Looking at solicitations, you'll see several new DCnU comics coming in November featuring lesser-known heroes. Black Lightning shines again in Black Lightning: Cold Dead Hands. The Demon is back in The Demon:Hell on Earth. Zatanna reappears in Mystik U. Even Batman's latest (and most lazily-named) protege, The Signal, is getting some love with Batman and the Signal.

While it is a good idea to inject new characters into the publishing line up, all of those are mini-series. You'd almost think DC was afraid of commitment. (Why wouldn't they be? Even death is impermanent in the DCU.) However, the company seems equally unwilling to drop the hammer on underperforming ongoing titles to make room for new ones.

In June (the most recent month for which numbers are available) the company had 3 ongoing titles that undersold the lowest selling issue of Booster Gold volume 2 (Booster Gold #43 in 2011). New Superman and Blue Beetle had June issues very near DC's pre-Flashpoint cancellation threshold. The worst performing of the three, Cyborg, is doing worse than its pre-Rebirth numbers, and it was trending below the old threshold then! Judging by November solicitations, all of these will continue into November with no cancellation, taking up valuable opportunities for titles with a chance to spark interest in new readers.

I don't mean to suggest that returning Booster Gold to action would reverse any of those negative sales trends for the company, but I do suggest it couldn't hurt. At worst, Booster Gold can outsell Cyborg! I can name at least one reader who would be picking up more DCnU books if Booster Gold was around.

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DC released solicitations for April 2016 publications this week, and you don't need me to tell you who was notably absent.

Take a look at the list of gaps between in-continuity appearances:

1. 336 days between Superman #124 and Chase #4 (Apr. 1997 to Mar. 1998)
2. 302 days between Martian Manhunter #24 and JLA: Our Worlds At War (Sept. 2000 to July 2001)
3. 244 days between All Star Western #21 and All Star Western #28 (June 2013 to Feb. 2014)
4. 238 days between Stormwatch #12 and All-Star Western #19 (Aug. 2012 to Apr. 2013)
5. 210 days between Haven: The Broken City #5 and Superman: Day of Doom #1 (Apr. 2002 to Nov. 2002)
6. 210 days between Superman: Day of Doom #1 and JLA: Welcome to the Working Week (Nov. 2002 to June 2003)
7. 189 days between Formerly Known as the Justice League #6 and Identity Crisis #1 (Dec. 2003 to June 2004)
8. 170 days between Bat-Mite #4 and now (November 2015 to present)

Unless Booster Gold makes a surprise cameo somewhere — and that seems unlikely based on solicitations — it looks like we're going to see the current position go higher. If Booster doesn't appear before May 1, that will mark 270 days between Booster Gold appearances. That's good enough for third place on the all-time list, displacing a gap set only two years ago!

By the way, when Booster Gold Volume 2 was cancelled going into Flashpoint, the series was averaging sales of about 15,000 per issue. That's about as well as Martian Manhunter and Secret Six are selling now. The New 52 Justice League International was canceled with sales of about 28,000 per issue, higher sales than more than half of DC's current offering. I don't see any reason Booster Gold wouldn't be a competitive seller in today's market.

So, DC, why no Booster Gold? Is it the same reason you're not publishing a Supergirl book despite having a monster hit on network television? Did you need that space in your line-up for Telos, a book so unwanted that it was canceled after two issues? Would it cut into the 11 Batman books you release on a monthly basis?

I'm sure DC has their reasons for hiding Booster Gold. Maybe they are even good reasons. But comic books are a business, and I've got money I want to spend. Until DC gives me a Booster Gold book, I guess I'll be spending that money on something published by someone else.

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Brady Kj recently found a Booster Gold cameo appearance in Harley Quinn #20. Naturally, I rushed out to my LCS to pick up a copy. Sure enough, Booster is on the first page as part of one of Harley Quinn's dreams.

I should have stopped reading there. Every character in these pages is, to put it lightly, a jerk. None are worse than the protagonist, Harley Quinn.

There are always problems adapting a villain into a story protagonist. Harley Quinn is implied to have a warped morality, but no morality is present in this issue other than her own. She murders a customer service representative in the busy Los Angeles airport, steals a police car as an officer watches, and pushes a company mascot in front of a bus on a crowded street. This isn't "cartoon violence," either; characters are shown clearly suffering from Harley's actions. Yet no one in Harley's world even attempts to stop her from committing these villainous acts. The only "heroes" present are prostitutes in costumes. Do heroes only exist in Harley's dreams?

Issue co-writer Jimmy Palmiotti liberally sprinkled the same sorts of violence throughout All-Star Western, and it worked there. Bounty hunter Jonah Hex lived in an Old West devoid of law and order. More importantly, despite his flaws Hex was an anti-hero devoted to bringing to justice the fiends who committed these types of atrocities.

By comparison, Harley Quinn is set in modern-day Los Angeles starring a mentally damaged villain. L.A. is not a lawless place located sometime in the distant and barbarous past. What good are Batman and Superman if they let a Harley Quinn run free to murder citizens of America's largest city? What's the point of using L.A. as a backdrop if there's no police or other public servant striving to enforce the rule of law?

I guess what I'm saying is that it damages the verisimilitude a shared comic book universe if inhabitants of that universe are allowed to kill, maim, and steal without recourse. I guess I'm also saying that murder isn't a very funny punchline. But what do I know?

Harley Quinn #20 sold more than 56,000 copies, more than any single issue of Booster Gold outside the "Blackest Night" crossover event. So the next time you question one of DC's decisions, remember that sex, violence, and death sell comics, not story or character. The market has spoken.

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This is your monthly reminder that Justice League 3000 is in stores today. The solicitation text begs us to buy it.

Beetle and Booster! Fire and Ice! The Injustice League (no, not that one — this is a different one)! Plus, the stuff that's on the cover! C'mon, people! We're bending over backward here! Pick up this comic before it's too late!

Breaking out the hard sell, I see. I will take this opportunity to point out that sales for the title got a boost in the issue that was mostly devoted to Booster Gold and Blue Beetle, (#12) and have slid some in the time since. I'm no one to tell Keith Giffen or J.M. Dematteis how to write a comic book, but I do humbly suggest that more Booster Gold and Blue Beetle might be a good thing.

You can find a preview for the issue at ComicBook.com.

(Footnote: I find it amusing that DCComics.com appears to be sabotaging their own title: the web page for this book promotes the wrong Blue Beetle in this issue. Their "starring" links ignore Fire and Ice and link visitors to the bio for Jaime Reyes, who is very unlikely to be along for this ride.)

Buy this issue and make Skeets (who is also very unlikely to appear in this issue) happy.

UPDATE 2015-03-05: THEY LIED TO US. Booster Gold and Blue Beetle DO NOT appear in this issue. Sorry.

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I don't think it's any secret that I don't care for the New 52. I know I'm not alone.

I often hear or read others with long-term DC Comics buying habits express disappointment with the change to the DC Universe. When we malcontents get together, someone invariably invokes sales numbers to prove that most people hate the New 52.

That sounds comforting, but is is true? I looked at the numbers to see for myself.

The naysayers have a point. The New 52 is dying a slow death, kept alive largely through increasingly regular injections of "events."

The graph above charts the sales since the launch of the New 52, and the trend lines make it clear that DC is losing ground to their Marvelous Competition. (Let's not pretend that DC's recent changes are anything other than an attempt to close the gap with Marvel, which is more successful in all ways, but especially in the one that counts: sales revenue).

Those spikes in the graph are the initial reboot and last year's "Villains Month" 3D covers. Those 3D covers really seemed to work. Expect to see them more often if this September's Futures End covers are anywhere near as successful. (Living from event to event? Why does that market strategy seem so familiar?)

But before I celebrate the proof that the New 52 is loosing steam, I should put that in perspective and look at what DC was doing before their re-branding:

Here I've extended my timeline backwards. We have sales data for 32 months of the New 52 universe, so I decided to look backwards the same distance before the relaunch. Frankly, they don't look so bad. (I can't even blame the sales dip for January 2011 on Flashpoint. That month saw a change in Diamonds' distribution practice, and was a low volume month across the board.)

Ah, but when I put the two timelines together, look what happens:

Look at that upswing! And it's probably better than it looks. All of my data comes from ComicChron.com and is based off Diamond Comics Distributors' coded sales charts. That means that my numbers are estimates that do not include digital sales. That probably means that the modern numbers are bigger and better than we can see (at least in months without fancy 3D covers).

It's true that a rising tide floats all boats, and the comics industry is currently experiencing something of a sales renaissance as the economy has rebounded from the Great Recession. However, DC is hitting sales numbers they haven't seen in over a decade. It would be foolish to credit most of that change to anything other than the excitement generated by the launch of the New 52.

Creatively, I still refuse to call the New 52 a success. I can still argue that rebooting to something that I might want to read — such as keeping Wally West as The Flash or reverting Superman to Silver Age godhood — may have produced better, longer lasting gains. What I cannot do is deny that the New 52 gave DC sales momentum unlike any in recent memory. The only question now is when DC will do it again.

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