What, no love for international superheroes? Was it that the New 52 Justice League International was so bad or that it just wasn't the Justice League: Generation Lost follow-up that we were promised?

Last week's poll question: When Booster Gold does get another series, what would you like to see him doing? (61 votes)

Now that football season is returning, I see advertisements from former athletes promoting all sorts of unmanly products they would have avoided like the plague in their prime. Could Booster Gold one day be relegated to selling flimflam and quackery?

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Seventeen years ago today, DC released what remains my least favorite comic to include an appearance by Booster Gold. That comic was Total Justice #1.

Why is this my least favorite book? It was inked by Dick Giordiano and lettered by Gaspar Saldino, two longtime DC legends. Too bad inking and letters can't make up for the abysmal script by Christopher Priest and eye-gouging pencils by Ramon Bernado. No doubt the artists are fully aware that they are working on a glorified toy advertisement — the issue cover proudly procliams "based on the Kenner acton figures" — and they can't be bothered to make themselves care about it.

See what I mean? Those 4 wordy panels include Booster's only dialogue in the series, and are pretty indicative of the rest of the issue. Why is so much dialogue necessary? This miniseries is supposed to promote action figures, not talking dolls!

(While we're on those panels, who is Gypsy even talking to? Captain Atom? "Jar head" is slang for a marine, not an Air Force Captain! Is she saying that Booster's head looks like a jar? If so, shouldn't the artist draw Booster's head to actually look like a jar? Grrr. It's just all so bad!)

That's just a taste of what is bad here. Nothing about this series makes much sense. Heroes lose their powers. But only some of their powers. Sometimes. Marian Manhunter is excluded from action because his powers might cut out, but Aquaman keeps his powers because they are "native." The Beetle's Bug works just fine, but Booster Gold is kept on the sidelines because his technology won't work. Suffice it to say, this is not Christopher Priest's best work.

I've heard a lot of people over the years say that they liked the figures this series promoted. Part of the draw was the novelty. It might be hard to imagine, but the Total Justice toys were the first DC heroes action figures released since the Super Powers Collection of the 1980s. Too bad they all had "extreme" 1990s poses. Maybe I would have enjoyed the comic more if they had led to a Booster Gold figure. But no.

Even though there was some appreciation for the figures, I've never heard anyone say a kind word about the comics. There's a reason for that: they were terrible. Without a doubt, the worst Booster Gold comics to date.

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This is not the first time I've posted a pic of Blue and Gold as Bert and Ernie. This is also not the first time I've posted a pic by Bill Walko. However, this is the first time that I've posted a pic of Blue and Gold as Bert and Ernie by Bill Walko.

Walko created this piece for "The Line It Is Drawn" feature of the Comics Should Be Good! blog at ComicBookResources.com, where you can find more amazing mash-ups every week. You can find more work by the insanely talented Walko at his page on DeviantArt.com.

Thanks to Kord Industries (@KordIndustries1 on Twitter) for being the first to call this piece to my attention. (It's funny, but some pieces of art really stir up the fans. This is one of them. After @KordIndustries1 tweeted me, I must have been told about this a half dozen more times. Thanks to everyone who let me know. It's better to have a bunch of tipsters reporting the same thing than to accidentally miss something this awesome.)

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The Justice League Unlimited episode "The Greatest Story Never Told" was first broadcast nearly a decade ago, but the AV Club is just now getting around to reviewing it. I'm doing much better: I waited only a week before reviewing the review.

Regular AV Club contributor Oliver Sava opens his review by comparing the episode to the Tom Stoppard play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Sava doesn't follow through on this reference, instead turning his attention to other, stronger influences on the episode. However, once mentioned, this comparison becomes worthy of at least a brief exploration.

If you've never seen Rosencrantz — it's a favorite of mine, and I recommend it without reservation — the play is a meta-textural, existential tragicomedy. The misadventures of its protagonists, minor supporting characters from Shakespeare's Hamlet, are informed by the audience's knowledge of their fate in their original source material. By comparing what the audience knows about the protagonists to what they think they know, Stoppard is able to ask a variety of questions about the meaning (or lack thereof) of life. Honestly, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is the highest form of fan fiction.

In a similar way, "The Greatest Story Never Told" is a more enriching episode if the audience is familiar with the character of of Booster Gold. Writer Andrew Kreisberg uses Booster, a character generally perceived as infuriatingly selfish, to define heroism within the DC Universe. What does it mean to be a hero when a common house fire is insignificant compared to a reality-warping magical disaster? Is heroism objective or subjective?

Sava's AV Club review doesn't explicitly call "The Greatest Story Never Told" recommended watching, but any time a televised cartoon for children can introduce deeper subjects for its young audience's consideration, it deserves a look. If it can do so with Booster Gold, it becomes must-watch television.

You can find the full review at AVClub.com.

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Twice before (August and December), The Blot shared his collection of Booster Gold commissions with us. Well, he's been at it again:

From left to right, those commissions are by Thom Zahler, George Perez, and Art Thibert. Click on any of the images above to see The Blot's larger pics, or you can see the whole sketchbook in much larger detail at The Blot Says' Flickr page. While you're out and about, also consider dropping by The Blot's blog, TheBlotSays.com.

Thanks for sharing (again!), Blot!

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