It wasn't until the weekend that I realized that I failed to make note of last week's release of the $100 Absolute Dark Nights Death Metal, the most recent collection of 2021's Dark Nights: Death Metal mini-series.

Although this is called the "Absolute" edition, it only covers the main seven issues (which were previously released in a $30 edition back in 2021) plus some art extras. To get the additional 10 one-shot tie-ins and the five Justice League tie-in issues, you'll have to wait until next year's Omnibus edition.

As for any Booster Gold appearances to be expected in this week's books... well, you've already got a lot to read, right?

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Luckily for Booster boosters everywhere, Cort Carpenter hasn't let a rough patch of "health issues" keep him from adding new pages to his collection of Booster Gold sketch commissions.

Daniel Irizarri

Michael Fiffe

Ramona Fradon

I usually like to put these in alphabetical order, but this time I saved Ramona Fradon for last... because she's Ramona Fradon! A ninety-six-year-old DC legend and still drawing. Wow!

I hope all of your troubles are behind you, Cort. As always, thanks for sharing.

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Internet comic book "news" is often like a children's game of telephone: Someone says something, someone else hears what they want to hear and passes that along to someone else, and the next thing you know, Blue Beetle will be co-starring in HBO's announced Booster Gold television series.

If you saw that news reported somewhere in the past week, know that at this point it's nothing more than wishful thinking.

The original report that many sites are referencing ran in The Hollywood Reporter. "Marketing 'The Flash': No Ezra Miller, But Lots of Batman and TV Spots" ruminates on the James Gunn-controlled future of the DC Cinematic Universe thusly:

Both executives have said some actors from the current universe could persist, and one who seems most likely is Xolo Maridueña, whose character Blue Beetle has close ties in the comics to Booster Gold. Gunn and Safran are planning their own Booster Gold show, and it is possible Blue Beetle could appear in it, depending on Beetle's reception this summer.

"Could persist"? "One who seems most likely"? As you can see, that's a lot of speculation on the part of the article's authors. Which is fine, so long as we recognize that for what it is.

It's not like we haven't had high hopes before. Once upon a time, people were similarly predicting that Booster Gold would show up on CW's The Flash or early seasons of DC's Legends of Tomorrow. He didn't.

Which is not to say that we shouldn't be hopeful. Blue Beetle could appear in a Booster Gold show. Assuming we ever actually get a Booster Gold show, I sure hope he does. All I'm saying is that we should all be careful not to confuse rumors with reality.

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Thanks to everyone who called my attention to the Booster Gold reference in AIPTcomics.com preview for this week's Green Lantern #2:

"No answer"? Booster's nowhere to be seen these days even by the inhabitants of the DCU!

By the way, this is the seventh volume of Green Lantern comics — the sixth to prominently feature Hal Jordan. Booster's only had two! Booster is 26 years younger than Hal (debuting in 1985 and 1959, respectively), but he's still going to need a new volume of issues every five years just to catch up.

Look on the bright side: that's a lot of adventures for readers to look forward to!

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Somehow, Booster Gold doesn't appear anywhere in Millennium #2, but Millennium #3 makes up for that by dedicating several pages to our hero.

Of those, my favorite is this one, page 11, written by Steve Englehart and drawn by Joe Staton:

Somehow, Steve Englehart's characterizations of the JLI here feel much more "correct" than Len Wein's JLA we saw last week in Blue Beetle #20. Both writers had worked on Justice League comics before, in the early (Wein) and late (Englehart) 70s. It's probably worth noting that according to Englehart's own website, steveenglehart.com, he was brought on to the book in 1977 to "give the characters personalities." That tradition clearly continued into Giffen/DeMatteis's International era, where personalities were often more important than plots.

And while I'm talking Englehart, I should probably also add that although he didn't introduce the "Manhunter" characters — that credit technically belongs to Joe Simon and Jack Kirby — Englehart did introduce the concept of the Manhunters as Oan robot constructs in Justice League of America #140. So there's a direct line from Englehart's 1970s JLA to Millennium a decade later.

That concludes your comics history lesson for this week, kids. Your assignment: read more comics!

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