SLW has brought it to my attention that for a second time in three months, a comic book depicted a Booster Gold doll. That book: Superman: The Kryptonite Spectrum #1.

In the story, Superman is suffering from purple kryptonite poisoning and is experiencing time out of order. The comic represents this by presenting the panels out of order (which is a clever bit of metatext, but isn't a great reading experience).

As a public service, here are the four panels which depict Booster Gold in chronological order of events:

Page 23, Panel 1

Page 21, Panel 3

Page 22, Panel 2

Page 23, Panel 2

Hmm. That looks kind of like a Booster Gold Troll doll. I sure hope Booster is getting a cut of all these Booster Gold-themed products.

Thanks, SLW.

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The latest solicitations are out at AIPTComics.com, and it doesn't look like DC Comics is giving Booster Gold fans any reason to buy new comics in November.

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There are people who frequent this site who do not care for Dan Jurgens' Justice League run. A recent commenter complained that the run is "essentially either an unimaginative retread of past stories or a vehicle for his absolute hero worship of Superman." I have to admit, that's not inaccurate.

Everyone can like what they like, of course, but I will point out that during his run, Jurgens was aware enough of exactly this criticism that his Justice League America #66 is 22 pages of team infighting while former Leaguers complain about how rotten everything has gotten. And then they worship Superman.

In light of the "things were better back in my day" theme of the issue, I particularly like this page that hints that when no one is looking, the Blue and Gold team aren't quite the pair of doofuses they play on TV.

Speaking only for myself, I think this issue is pretty good. But then, I tend to enjoy Superman hero worship, so I'm the target audience. You do you.

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It was on this day in the year 2009 when DC Published Booster Gold Volume 2, #23 with this cover:

As it happens, Boosterrific.com has a real footnote connection to that cover, as cover model Blair Butler namedropped us in her July 19, 2009, interview with Laura Hudson at ComicsAlliance.com:

CA: So what exactly makes you Booster Gold's biggest fan?

BB: Well, first, let me just admit that there are some massive Booster fans out there who really dwarf me – the folks who run the Boosterrific site, the guys at Project Fanboy, and the folks in the DC forums. They're all so passionate that it's really awe-inspiring and humbling. But let's settle this now: The real #1 fan would be Skeets or Blue Beetle. And I think Ted wins. However, if this were the mid-80s, Trixie Collins would totally be on the cover, rockin' some awesome 80s shoulder-pads.

Comic book-focused news site Comics Alliance, established in 2007, was sold in 2013, and has been largely defunct since 2017, now existing only to repost content from other sites owned by its corporate parent. To their credit, they keep some of their old content online, including this article, "Blair Butler Sets the Record Straight on ‘Booster Gold’."

Similarly, Project Fanboy became the FanboyBuzz and fizzled out by 2014. I'm sure it was just a coincidence that DC Comics killed their own message boards about the same time they launched the the-less-said-about-it-the-better "New 52" in 2012.

...And as I'm researching all this, I rediscovered that I previously covered this ground (with a longer excerpt from the interview) on its tenth anniversary, August 12, 2019.

Which may explain why so many of those websites eventually petered out: there's only so much comics content to report before you start repeating yourself.

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I cannot tell a lie: it was really hard for me to pick my favorite page in Justice League Quarterly #8. Booster appears in two of four stories in the issue, but they both have their problems.

The second, "Yesterday's News" is written by accomplished Bronze Age Superman writer Elliot S! Maggin, but it looks like a new artist tryout piece with exceptionally amateurish results. Booster plays only an ancillary role. If I had to pick a favorite among its pages, I'd choose the last. That page has real structural problems, but at least it means the story is over.

Fortunately, the first story, "Double Trouble," gives me plenty of pages to choose from. Too many, in fact, but mostly because not one of them is perfect. I don't know if the problem is Mark Waid's script or Rod Whigham's art, but the pacing irritates me. Instead of having each page complete a single idea or scene, punchlines and consequences often require the turn of a page, disrupting the flow. (I assume the goal of this approach was to allow the page turn to build suspense, but the art and dialogue just aren't tight enough to make that work here.)

Which is not to say that it's not an enjoyable story. In fact, I quite like how Waid works the pre-Crisis Crime Syndicate into the post-Crisis DCU. Waid successfully evokes the satirical tone of the corporate environment that Giffen and DeMatteis established around the Justice League International era while adding an additional layer of Battle of the Network Stars meets American Gladiators. It's superhero fun in the classic Brave and the Bold tradition.

But since I cannot tell a lie, honestly, the reason that I picked page 11 is because of the signs in the crowd in panel 2. Specifically, this sign:

Yeah. I've been to a lot of stadiums. We definitely need more of *that* sign in the world.

Honorable mention goes to page 4, with its series of panels straight out of Hero Hotline of D-list heroes interviewing for membership in the Conglomerate. Specifically this guy:

Quality stuff.

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