Just a few hours after Monday's blog post went live, Rob Snow wrote in to say

In a bit of sweet delicious irony, given todays blog post, I have a bit of Booster news. A new DC character guide dropped today. Booster has his own entry. Lol.

It turns out that the book Rob is talking about is exactly what he says it is: DC Ultimate Character Guide New Edition from DK and published by Penguin Random House. The "New Edition" part is important, because DK first released this book in 2011, then again in 2019. So technically this is the third edition (but who's counting?).

I note that the solicitation text on the publisher's page I linked to above calls this "The definitive encyclopedia to DC Comics characters." However, DK also publishes a book they explicitly title The DC Comics Encyclopedia (also in multiple editions), and that book really does a much better job of in-depth coverage of the DCU. By comparison, the Ultimate Character Guide is really a primer meant to familiarize younger audiences with the awesome DCU characters. No complaints about that; I'm just nitpicking hyperbolic sales jargon because I'm a grumpy old man.

Booster is featured in both of the previous editions of the DC Ultimate Character Guide as well as the newest new edition. The sales text also promises "Updated character profiles," though since I don't have all three books in front of me, I cannot tell you what that means for Booster's page. Not a lot, I'm guessing. Booster's big change in the past five years is the establishment of Blue & Gold Restoration in Blue and Gold. That's great, but if you have to boil down Booster's whole life story to just one page, it's really worth only a footnote of the "what he's up to now" variety.

I imagine that if you've got one of those previous releases, you probably don't need this. But need is kind of a funny word for us obsessive collector types, so do what you've gotta do, and I promise not to judge.

Thanks, Rob.

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