Booster booster Jace sent me this report from Warner Bros World in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, a place I didn't even know existed. Warner Bros World, that is. I may not often leave my dungeon, but I have heard of Abu Dhabi.

Writes Jace:

"For The Hero in Every Man, Cologne in (en?) Gold," is seen above the Gotham City Transit in the Gotham City area of the park. (It's super dark and far away but I hope this was an ok image.)

Jace must have a pretty good camera, because the accompanying photo isn't bad at all:

The product being advertised on that billboard sure looks like the unidentified bottle we see in Booster Gold Vol. 2, #17 (released in February 2009), and the slogan is reminiscent of the several variations of Dusk slogans used in multiple issues of Booster Gold volume 1. But the product name is... well, I'm not sure what the product name is.

As you can see in the Boosterrific.com annotations for that issue, I called that a bottle of Dusk, since that was the name of the cologne that Booster endorsed in volume 1 of his self-titled series (even though the volume 1 bottles had a slightly different label). But the comic doesn't identify the brand name. Neither does Secret Six #8 (released in April 2009), in which Deadshot wears Booster's fragrance for a night out with his colleagues (at a club called Hypertime).

words by Gail Simone; art by Carlos Rodriguez, Bit, Sal Cipriano, and Jason Wright
appearance first brought to my attention by Peter Duling

(And yes, I assume that "old maid's bathroom" is a reference to Booster's apocryphal 65-year-old wife, Gladys, from 2003's Formerly Known as the Justice League.)

As it happens, the Boosterrific.com directory of Booster's businesses and endorsements lists the product I've associated with Deadshot as "Cologne de Gold" even though, so far as I can tell, it is never called that in any comic book. I have to wonder if I gave it that name myself, perhaps influenced by Booster's fragrance for women, "Perfume du Booster," introduced a few months later in Booster Gold #23 (August 2009).

In any event, thanks to Jace for sending us the photo. It's cool that Booster Gold's salesmanship has reached Abu Dhabi, wherever that might be.

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Here's something I missed in the run up to Comic-Con: a teaser poster for DC's Year of the Villain event!

You probably can't see him, but Booster Gold is in there, right between Flash and Wonder Woman!

This ad was released online in July and appeared in all DC imprint comics published this week. (Does anyone recognize the artist? Drawn by Nick Bradshaw, inked by Cully Hamner, and colored by Hi-Fi Designs.) It specifically teases the first storyline in the upcoming Batman/Superman #1.

Booster's inclusion here shouldn't come as a surprise, as he had already been linked to the issue in May's DC's Year of the Villain Special. I guess we'll have to buy Batman/Superman #1 — in stores August 28 — to find out if Booster is truly among the "Secret Six" victims of the Batman Who Laughs.

In very related news, Jonathan Reichman pointed out that this week DC announced six new series to tie directly into the Batman/Superman series and four (and counting) Tales from the Dark Multiverse one-shots. One of those stories hints bad things for our hero.

Per the press release from DCComics.com:

TALES FROM THE DARK MULTIVERSE: INFINITE CRISIS #1
Writer James Tynion IV (Justice League, Justice League Dark) and artists Aaron Lopresti (Wonder Woman) and Matt Ryan (Damage) team up with cover artist Lee Weeks for this dark turn on DC's mega-event Infinite Crisis. The destruction of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman, the rise of Alexander Luthor and Superboy-Prime, and the rebirth of the Multiverse all began with Ted Kord, the Blue Beetle. Kord saw it all coming and died with secrets that could have saved the world. But in the Dark Multiverse, Blue Beetle survives, and with the death of Maxwell Lord by his hand, Ted sets off events that irreversibly alter the lives of not only the Justice League, but also his best friend, Booster Gold. In trying to prevent a crisis, Blue Beetle becomes the crisis, and the Dark Multiverse will never be the same.

Thanks for warning us that was coming, Jonathan. Let's see if we learn more when DC releases November solicitations (probably next week).

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Here we go again.

Heroes in Crisis isn't even over yet, and Booster Gold is already being included as a possible victim of the next round of DC's version of Russian Roulette.

This is the house ad that ran in this week's DC's Year of the Villain Special advertising for August's upcoming relaunch of Batman/Superman. As you can see, our hero, Booster Gold, is included among the list of possibilities to become the newest threat to the DC Universe in August's relaunch of Superman/Batman Batman/Superman.

The series writer, Joshua Williamson, spoke about the upcoming series with The Hollywood Reporter.

"We discover, through the Batman Who Laughs series that the Batman Who Laughs have been working on this massive plan since Metal. What it is is, he has sleeper agents throughout the [DC Universe]. They've been infected, and they're slowly turning into the worst versions of themselves," Williamson teased. "Some of them know they're changing, some don't. Some aren't aware it's kind of like a Jekyll and Hyde situation where they're not aware of [what] the other side is doing.

I can't say as I'm particularly enthusiastic about this, but I think it's more the timing than the concept. What with Metal, Doomsday Clock, Heroes in Crisis, Leviathan, "Year of the Villain," etc., it's starting to feel like villains having the upper hand is the rule, not the exception, in the modern DCnU. A little sunlight, some *joy*, some *fun* would do everyone some good. Why bother being a hero anymore if it's never anything but murder and sadness? No one likes to always be in crisis.

In other words, why so serious, DC?

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Comicsbeat.com just ran an article ("DC Comics Month-to-Month Sales: June 2010") by Marc Oliver-Frisch looking at sales trends across all DC Comics titles. As I was reading over it, I noticed that although Booster Gold is already on the below-average side of the sales bell-curve and trending downward, DC's recent cancellation threshold appears to be much lower than I had previously predicted. Instead of 10,000 copies per month, the threshold lately looks more like it may be as low as 7,000 copies per month. That's probably terrible for the state of the industry, but great news for Booster Gold. That gives the title even more time to turn it around, especially as it is still selling pretty constantly around 20,000 copies per month, roughly equal to the other second-tier heroes titles such as The Outsiders, Power Girl, and Secret Six. That's not such bad company, really.

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