Today Judd Winick is 50 years old, and he has spent many of those years creating comic books. (Technically, he's spent most of the past decade creating best-selling Hilo graphic novels for middle schoolers, but c'mon. We all know graphic novels are just longform comic books.)

Though Winnick has rarely worked on stories involving Booster Gold, there is one notable exception:

Justice League: Generation Lost is the story of former Justice League International members efforts to bring their former mentor, Maxwell Lord, to justice for his subsequent crimes against humanity.

The series began in 2010 and for the most part took into account nearly two decades worth of shared-universe heroic adventures. To Winick's credit, if you'd never read a single issue of Giffen and DeMatteis's Justice League International or Johns' Countdown to Infinite Crisis and Blackest Night, I'm sure you can still enjoy Justice League: Generation Lost. It's as much a traditional superheroic action/adventure story as it is a revenge story.

And for Booster Gold, it was very, very personal.

art by Keith Giffen, Aaron Lopresti, Matt Ryan, Hi-Fi, Sal Cipriano

In fact, Booster's key role in this story is a huge part of why I included the series in my 2020 list of the 12 Best Booster Gold stories ever.

Unfortunately, the story's impact was promptly devalued as the established DCU was discarded for the New 52. That means there are a decade's worth of new DC readers who are unlikely to be familiar with this great tale, which is a real shame.

As a birthday present to Mr. Winick, how about re-reading this great series. Better still, recommend it to someone you think would like it. It'll be like Winick gave *them* a present for *his* birthday.

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