Happy Halloween! To celebrate the holiday, we DC comic book bloggers are banding together to give you what you want most: reviews of DC's "Ghosts" annuals from 1998! (What's that you say, you'd rather see more pics of hot chicks cosplaying? Hey, it wouldn't really be Halloween if we gave you what you really wanted, now would it?)

While Booster doesn't actually appear in any of the 1998 annuals, that's not going to stop me from joining in the ghoulish fun. Booster has encountered spiritual apparitions of the undead, including the time he led the Super Buddies to Hell to recover Ice in 2005's JLA Classified #6 and 7!

Ok, so it wasn't actually Booster's intention to rescue Ice from Hell. In fact, it hadn't been Booster's intention to go to Hell at all. Booster was just blowing off some steam when things got out of hand, and he accidentally wished the team to Hell. It wasn't Booster's finest moment.

Arguably, nothing about his time with the Super Buddies represents any of Booster's finest moments. Because Blue Beetle had something of a makeover in recent appearances in L.A.W. and Birds of Prey, Booster is used as comic relief and scapegoat for the duo. We Booster-philes may chafe at seeing Booster playing the fool, our raw feelings should be salved by the fact that he's doing it in support of his best friend.

Booster himself is surprisingly resilient to finding himself in Hell. This could be a psychological defense, or perhaps Booster is truly an atheist (as he himself stated as part of a punchline in 1988's Justice League International Annual #2). In any event, he remains skeptical when his friends encounter the apparition of their long-dead teammate, Ice (who died in 1994's Justice League Task Force #14).

Is she Ice, or isn't she? Is the team in Hell, or isn't it? The answers to these questions aren't immediately clear, and that very uncertainty is key to the psychological insecurity at the heart of this ghost story. No matter how you think about it, you don't have the answers. That's not a very comfortable position for anyone, much less heroes who are required to make split-second decisions with lives in the balance.

Published over a decade after their best work on Justice League International , this issue's mix of humor, action, and psychological drama is indicative of the best works of co-writers Keith Giffen and J.M. DeMatteis. If you like your super-hero comics not to fit within any easily definable genre, you'll find something to love in this issue.

If you're looking for something else spooky to pass the time on today, try something from one of these 17 other scary DC bloggers:

• "Ghosts" @ The Aquaman Shrine
• "Bough Breaks" @ Batman: Gotham Knights Online
• "Swamp Thing's Ghost Dance" @ The BLOG from the BOG - Swamp Thing
• "Life Itself" @ Captain's JLA Homepage
• "Ghosts' - The Corpse Corps!" @ Corps Conjecture
• "What Creeps Out The Creeper?" @ DC Bloodlines
• "The Distance Gone" @ Diana Prince is the New Wonder Woman
• "Shoe Shine.. Back from the Dead" @ Firestorm Fan
• "The Death Sentence" @ Great Krypton!
• "Happy Halloween" @ I Am The Phantom Stranger
• "Heart's Afire" @ The Idol-Head of Diabolu
• "Legend of Driq" @ Indigo Tribe
• "Role Model" @ Justice League Detroit
• "Ghosts" @ Power of the Atom
• "Zor" @ Siegel & Shuster: Mythmakers
• "High-Speed Hauntings" @ Speed Force
• "Ragman - Ripped to Shreds!" @ The Suit of Souls

Thanks to Chad Bokelman of corpsconjecture.blogspot.com for putting this crossover together.

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