Back in August, when DC announced November 2023 solicitations, I wrote

In worse news, the November 2023 DC solicitations are out at GamesRadar.com, and the only sign of our hero is a poke at the Blue and Gold team in the tease for Fire & Ice: welcome to Smallville #4 (shipping in December).

Well, that was true then. But sometimes things change for the better. If BleedingCool.com can be believed, key information was left out of those solicitations.

DC's Twas The Mite Before Christmas, a seasonal Bat-Mite anthology, was solicited as being by Natalie Abrams, Michael W. Conrad, Josh Trujillo, Ethan Sacks, Zipporah Smith, Rob Levin, Sholly Fisch, and Jillian Grant with [art] by Marcus Smith, Gavin Guidry, Andrew Drilon, Soo Lee, Juan Bobillo and more. But who is doing what? And was anyone dropped? No, but a few were added. Here is the full creative team as it hits FOC this weekend.

• The Teen Titans in "At Home Alone in Titans Tower" by Zipporah Smith and Logan Faerber
• Harley Quinn & Amethyst in "The Princess Switch" by Rob Levin and Bob Quinn
• Lex Luthor in "Lex-Tacular Christmas Carol" by Ethan Sacks and Soo Lee
• Batwoman in "Riddler on the Roof" by Natalie Abrams and Marcus "Mas" Smith
• Booster Gold in "The Santa Copies" by Jillian Grant and Rebekah Isaacs
• Superman in "Streaks in the Sky" by Michael W. Conrad and Gavin Guidry
• Bunker in "It's a Bunkerful Life" by Josh Trujillo and Andrew Drilon
• Bat-Mite in "Wonderful Toys" by Sholly Fisch and Juan Bobillo

Bleeding Cool has a history of teasing Booster Gold appearances that never manifest, but the solicitation text did explicitly reference "eight classic holiday stories!", so that math checks out. The cover image on LunarDistribution.com also shows Harley Quinn, Lex Luthor, Batwoman, Superman, Bunker, and Bat-Mite, so that looks promising, too.

However, both the solicitation and the cover include John Constantine, who you'll notice is conspicuously absent from the above list. Ruining my holiday fun sounds just like the sort of thing Constantine would do!

Now you've been forewarned. Don't let this one pass you by when it arrives in fine Local Comic Shoppes everywhere on December 12.

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A few weeks ago, while discussing my favorite page of Justice League International #14, I said that Steve Leialoha's loose style was a bad match for Keith Giffen's layouts. I've been looking at a lot of Giffen's layout art since his recent passing, and I've changed my mind. I now think the problem with Leialoha's art in JLI #14 and #15 is that Leialoha's finishes are probably too loyal to Giffen's layout style.

In any event, the art in Justice League International #15, while still not up to the standard set by regular series artist Kevin Maguire, is at least more consistent from panel to panel and page to page than the previous issue managed.

Thanks to J.M. DeMatteis's dialogue, there are several pages competing to be my favorite of the issue, including Booster Gold flying into action in page 10, Booster Gold saving the day on page 15, and Batman's punchline on page 22. But since this will always be the first meeting between Blue and Gold and Fire and Ice, page 6 steals the show:

I can't say the four of them really get along any better these days, but they'll always be family.

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This week DC released The Return of Superman 30th Anniversary Special, which reunites Dan Jurgens and the other creators who made the original event such a compelling read that it's worth revisiting three decades later. I enjoyed reading it, but I am duty bound to point out that Booster Gold is not in that book.

Of course, longtime Booster boosters know that's an appropriate omission. At the time, Booster Gold's superhero career looked to be just as dead as Superman with no clear signs that he would ever be returning.

Doomsday destroyed Booster's original 25th-century powersuit in Superman #74 (written by Dan Jurgens), and Booster spent most of the 1993 summer of "Regin of the Superman" on the sidelines as the Justice League put itself back together under Wonder Woman's leadership. Superman would be back at work by October, but it would take Booster another 4 years before his powers were even close to the what they had been before. In fact, the restoration came exactly 50 months later, in Superman #124 (written by Dan Jurgens).

Which is not to say that Booster plays no role behind the scenes in The Return of Superman 30th Anniversary Special. The 2010 story "The Tomorrow Memory," beginning Booster Gold volume 2 #28 (written by guess who), establishes that Booster Gold, in his role as Time Master, was in Coast City while it was being destroyed by Cyborg Superman.... to ensure that it was destroyed.

That may not seem very "heroic," but without Booster Gold, Time Master, it's possible that no one would consider The Return of Superman worth revisiting 30 years later. Being a Time Master is a thankless job, but somebody's got to do it.

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Longtime Booster booster Morgenstern writes in to alert me that the DC Comics-themed digital trading card game (TCG) DC Dual Force from Cryptozoic Entertainment has finally been released, and that the game has a Booster Gold card — and also a Skeets card!

About all I know about the game is what I've read on DCDualForce.com, where you can find a database of cards. The reviews on SteamPowered.com aren't great, but it is a new game, and there are always bugs in new games. Maybe after a few updates, it will be a must-play, and gamers everywhere will have a Booster Gold in their digital hand.

In the meantime, it's kind of a fun game just to identify the source material from which the cards took their images. (In these cases, the covers of Booster Gold #32 and 52 Week Two, respectively.)

Thanks, Morgenstern.

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The life of any comic book hero would be a lonely one if not for the many characters who have made up their supporting cast. Just as Superman has Lois Lane and Batman has Alfred, Booster Gold has also shared his adventures with quite a few people over the years. Today we look at one of those, Mindancer.

They say you never forget your first time. First love. First paycheck. First stollen time machine you used to travel back in time to become a super hero. And even first defeat.

In Booster Gold's case, that means he'll always remember the first time he met Mindancer.

Blackguard gets all the fame for appearing on the cover of Booster Gold #1, but the real villain in Booster Gold's 1986 debut issue is the "unidentified, super-powered woman who," in the breathless words of WGBS television news reporter Cindy Miles, "took S.T.A.R.'s satellite guidance system from Booster Gold!"

That mysterious, garishly-costumed assailant is "an extremely dangerous" psychic mercenary codenamed Mindancer. According to Booster's sidekick Skeets, she can leach the mental energy from nearby bystanders to boost her innate telekinetic and telepathic abilities.

At the time she crossed swords with Booster Gold, she was working for The 1000, who also employed Blackguard. In fact, Booster's inaugural defeat of Blackguard led directly to his rematch with Mindancer when she was sent to spring Blackguard from Metropolis Prison in Booster Gold #2. They fight to a draw, and Mindancer escapes after Blackguard creates a distraction. Considering that escaping was her whole reason for being there, this should probably count as another win for Mindancer.

Their third encounter, inside the headquarters of The 1000 in Booster Gold #3, goes even worse for Booster, as he is left unconscious and placed in a 1000 death trap!

Booster escapes thanks only to the timely intervention of Thorn (Booster Gold #4), who also defeats Mindancer in hand-to-hand combat. Thorn tears off Mindancer's mask, revealing that her red hair is only a wig. Mindancer's true face underneath is... well, this:

Why does she look like that? We may never know. The humiliation of having her true face exposed empowers Mindancer, an "unskilled physical combatant" according to her entry in Who's Who Update '87 #4, to overwhelm Thorn and escape.

Mindancer has rarely been seen since. She next shows up in 1994's Green Lantern Volume 3 #52 as a (masked) inmate in Slabside Penitentiary for metahumans, indicating that at some point she was caught and brought to justice. It must have been a long sentence. She's not seen again until The Flash #800 (2023), where she is caught participating in a poker game with stolen goods and presumably re-imprisoned.

After nearly four decades, it doesn't look like Booster and Mindancer will be crossing paths again anytime soon. Therefore, the final record stands at Mindancer 3, Booster Gold 0, a result so lopsided, I'm sure Booster Gold would prefer to forget.

Other People in Booster Gold's Neighborhood:

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