If you missed it, the big news from DC yesterday was the announcement that Justice League of America, the title that Geoff Johns has teased will feature the eventual return of Booster Gold to DCnU continuity, will hit stands in February alongside its own spin-offs, Katana and Vibe. Russ Burlingame has the info on the Booster Gold-Andrew Kreisberg-Vibe connection at ComicBook.com.

To ensure that this Justice League book -- featuring a team without a Flash, Superman, or Wonder Woman much like the now-cancelled Justice League International -- is a sales success, DC plans to cheat the market. In addition to the standard cover, the book will be published with 52 variant covers: one for each state in the union, plus the territories of the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. That's a total of 53 covers. Fifty-three! I pause here for emphasis.

Let's be frank: the purpose of variant covers is to promote sales via an artificial scarcity. If an issue has a variant cover printed in limited quantities, some collectors will buy an extra copy for the sake of maintaining a comprehensive collection. Some speculators will seek out the variants hoping that their relative scarcity will lead to a long-term increase in value. Whatever your opinion on the morality of this marketing strategy, it cannot be denied that variant covers do increase sales.

Is DC genuinely hoping that completists or speculators out there will try to acquire all 53 covers? Of course they are. By allowing retailers to order each of the 52 variants as a separate issue, the company is obviously hoping that each direct market retailer spends a small fortune trying to acquire at least a few of each cover to appease those collectors and speculators.

(It seems to me that DC is specifically targeting the direct market with this stunt. I've never seen any evidence that variant covers increase sales of digital editions, where "collecting" and "speculating" have little meaning.)

There must be a limit to the variant cover sales response, and I would expect it to be something less than 53. Consider that if you were to buy one of each at cover price, the total at the register will be $211.47 before tax. That's a lot of cash for just one issue. Compare that to the hardcover 52 Omnibus due out next week that will reprint all 52 issues of 2007's 52 series. Unlike the stack of variant covers for Justice League of America #1, the 52 comics included in the $150 Omnibus will at least tell a complete story.

There is no word yet whether Booster Gold will be seen in the series' first issue. If he is, I might consider buying 53 copies. But only if he is.

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The Irredeemable Shag! of FirestormFan.com brings our attention to the following fan art of the never-before-seen team-up between Jason Rusch and Booster Gold.

This version of Booster appears to have a solid gold torso, and no gauntlets (or legs), but I still like it more than the official DCnU costume. I'm a sucker for the high collar.

This was drawn by Brazilian artist Rodrigo Martins dos Santos. You can find a lot of his comic-inspired pin-up art at DeviantArt.com, where he posts as adagadegelo.

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Earlier this week DC Entertainment announced that they had partnered with Kia Motors America to create five one-of-a-kind customized cars featuring Justice League characters. The press release announced that these "radical machines" were created utilizing Jim Lee's Justice League designs in order to promote DC's "We Can Be Heroes" charity campaign. "We Can Be Heroes" supports of Horn of Africa hunger relief. The cars will be auctioned off later this year with proceeds going to the campaign.

When I hear "Justice League character" and "radical machine," I think "Boostermobile." However, given that DC's latest custom vehicles are destined for a charity auction, it's understandable that our favorite Corporate Crusader would be reluctant to donate his beloved Boostermobile to any cause that didn't profit Booster Gold.

These cars were unveiled Tuesday at the 2012 SEMA trade show in Las Vegas. While I gotta admit that a car show seems a good place to show off some sweet customized cars, SEMA shows are not open to the general public. If the goal of these cars was really to "raise awareness" of your campaign, DC, maybe you should try just driving them down the street instead.

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Outside of Luthor's brief term in office, DC comics have traditionally had benevolent Presidents, at least so far as the agenda of super heroes have been concerned. It's always Senators who are the really evil ones. (Just ask Booster Gold his opinion of Senator Ballard.)

Last week's poll question: In comic books, would you rather have a good President or an evil one? (33 votes)

Enough politics. Let's talk about something that really matters: television.

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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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