Flash's so-called "one minute war" has been rolling along for months, and in last week's The Flash #795, we finally got another appearance by the Gold Beetle (last seen in January's The Flash: One Minute War Special).

"The One-Minute War, Part Six: Give Me Liberty"; written by Jeremy Adams; art by Roger Cruz, George Kambadais, Fernando Pasarin, and many more

Gold Beetle is in only a few panels in this issue, most of which are pretty spoiler-y. What I *can* say is that despite multiple Multiversal reboots, it seems that DC just can't let Heroes in Crisis go.

We'll have to pay attention to future issues for more information.

Thanks to Rob Snow for keeping tabs on Gold Beetle for us.

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A little something different today for Booster Gold #21. Rather than show you the page that's my favorite — probably page 6, but I like Ty Templeton inking Dan Jurgens so much, it could be just about any of them — I'm going to showcase the page I think is the most interesting. Page 21:

As I said, I love the art, the beautifully naturalistic posing, musculature, textures, and expressions. But what makes this page so interesting to me is the layout.

Since Booster Gold is the first to speak in panel one, he's on the left. As a rule in English-language comics, speech balloons should be read in order from left to right (following the visual scanning tendency imparted by our left-to-right language construction). Therefore, it generally follows that in American comics, the first speaker should appear on the left side of the panel. In this case, that's Booster, who Jurgens the artist cleverly puts in the long cast shadow of the evil alien mastermind. So far, so great.

The alternating tight close-ups in panels two and three follow in the familiar tradition of the cinematic Western showdown between gunslingers, with Booster playing the white hat cowboy against the gloating villain. The allusion to a gunfight is especially apt given Booster's charged wrist blaster and accompanying death threat. That's a bluff, of course, but the alien hopefully doesn't know that.

And then there's panel four. By the same rules as panel one, the first speaker, Booster, should be on the left. But there's extra reason to put Booster on the left here because Booster was established on the left in panel one. Sequential art and cinema follow many of the same rules, one of those being the convention that speakers shouldn't abruptly swap positions during a scene. Cinema calls this the 180-degree rule. While this rule can and sometimes should be broken, doing so always calls attention to the violation, which is unwarranted here. So it might seem that panel four is following all the rules. But it's also wrong.

From the position of the reader, when the alien Rangor tells Booster Gold to "look," he points behind Booster to the left. In sequential art, where each panel represents a specific moment in a sequence, Rangor is essentially pointing the reader backwards in time. The figures in the panel should be posed such that Rangor points to the right, visually guiding the reader's eye to the issue's big reveal on the story's last page.

In the original publication, this is especially egregious as page 21 was printed on the left side of a two page spread!

When the issue was reprinted in Booster Gold: Future Lost, DC had the good sense to revise this so that page 21 was printed on the righthand side. The reader has to turn the page to uncover the surprise ending. It's a big improvement.

While we're here, I'd be amiss not to call attention to the contribution to these panels by colorist Gene D'Angelo. The first panel is a primarily an unsettling orange. Then each panel becomes progressively cooler in color temperature — pink, light blue, dark blue — as Booster's hot-blooded threat is chilled by the villain's machinations. It's a very nice touch (that looks even better with Jurgens' pyramidal layout).

Did I say this wasn't my favorite page? I might have to rethink that.

Booster Gold comics: even when they're bad, they're good!

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I woke up yesterday to find this very important email from Marty:

Booster sighted in Superman's story in DC's Legion of Bloom anthology! He and Beetle seem to have summoned imp versions of themselves, making Superman's day just a little bit more annoying.

Sure enough, here's the panel:

Ooh, that's a good panel. Good enough to get me to buy a full book!

(Full disclosure: I was already going to buy the book because it has a Captain Carrot story in it. Although, come to think of it, I buy all the DC anthology books because I'm a sucker for short stories. So from that point of view, getting a bonus Booster Gold panel is icing on the cake. If anthology books were slot machines, I won!)

Obviously, Marty interprets "chibi" Blue and Gold to be 5th-dimensional imps. And it's certainly true that Mr. Mxyzptlk makes several appearances in Dave Weilgosz's (delightful) 10-page story Superman story.

However, I interpret these two as the Blue and Gold from Earth-42. The Li'l Justice League played a significant role in Grant Morrison's 2015 Multiplicity event, and they returned to action as recently as 2020's DC' Very Merry Multiverse. We've not seen the Booster Gold and Blue Beetle from that world before, but Booster is certainly capable of traveling through the Multiverse, so... why not now?

Whatever the case, thanks to Marty for being sure all Booster boosters can all enjoy the latest Blue and Gold (and Blue and Gold) hijinks!

Buy this issue and make Skeets happy! (Is there a chibi Skeets? There has to be, right?)

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Bad news first: DC's June 2023 solicitations are out at aiptcomics.cpom, and there's not a Booster Gold to be seen. That's 4 months and counting of no predictable appearances. This new "Dawn of DC" is looking less and less golden.

(Over the weekend, TwinCitiesGeek.com reported that Dan Jurgens has "started writing another Black Label project for DC" that "will be coming a little later yet this year." Seems unlikely that it'll be a Black Label Booster Gold story, but who knows?)

On the brighter side, while Booster is on hero hiatus, Boosterrific.com is better than ever thanks in no small part to J, who has spent an inordinate amount of time hunting down errors in the annotations and book details. Together, we're making things right that once went wrong.

Why, just this weekend, J discovered that the site was missing (count 'em!) two different Justice League Unlimited reprint volumes that contain Booster Gold adventures. Oops!

Shame on me for missing those, but hearty thanks to J for all the hard work. Booster boosters everywhere owe you a debt of gratitude. Keep up the good work!

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Every time I read Justice League #6, I'm surprised that I like it as much as I do.

For some reason, I always think it is going to disappoint me. I'm not sure why. Maybe that's because I know Booster plays a diminished role. Maybe it's because The Creeper annoys me.

What I am sure of is that page 6 is my favorite page, explicitly because of the Batman joke in those three panels in the middle of the page (which inexplicably mirror-images the punchline-panel — Booster's hair should be parted his left and Canary's on her right).

Is it just me, or does it seem like DeMatteis and Giffen were originally trying to pair Black Canary and Booster before the Blue/Gold team developed? Ah, well. Canary was too cool for Booster anyway (no matter where her hair was parted).

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