Last week on Twitter, the image of a 1938 house advertisement for Action Comics #1 inspired Russ Burlingame to compare it to "that Direct Currents-style book that circulates as '1: Booster Gold' from time to time."

For those of you who don't know, Burlingame was talking about this, DC Releases Vol.1, No. 21, February, 1986:

DC Releases was a free handout for customers in the nascent direct comics market of the mid-to-late 1980s. (No. 48 was the final issue before it was replaced by Direct Currents, which continued to promote DC products for another decade.) This is called the "February" issue because it was promoting books with a "February" cover date, although they were mostly being sold to consumers in October/November 1985.

The solicitation text, likely written by DC's promotional copywriter extraordinaire, Paul Kupperberg, is pretty Boosterrific:

He's In It For The Bucks!

Talk shows! Prime-time commercials! Opening night bashes! T.V. guest appearances! Product endorsements! Where does this guy come from?

Just between you and me, the other heroes in the DC Universe aren't too hot on Booster Gold's strivings for star-status. But Skeets, on the other hand, is loving it! Skeets? Oh. He's Booster's flying, computerized companion. Who knows where he came from, either. But wherever it is, all the gossip columns have it that he and Booster came together!

As Metropolis goes goo-goo and ga-ga over this empowered hunk (ya gotta hand it to the guy), he keeps his priorities straight! He knows that being a celebrity super-hero means being a super-hero first, and when B.G. puts his powers into drive—watch out!

In this premier issue, Booster must recover a satellite guidance system stolen from S.T.A.R. Labs (I hope he doesn't miss his contract negotiation meeting because of that!) And: Action explodes in the streets of Metropolis when the incredibly strong Blackguard meets our affluent hero face-to-face!

Dan Jurgens, penciller on The Legion of Super-Heroes, Sun Devils, and Warlord, and Mike DeCarlo, who inked Dan on Warlord, promise a super-action series, seasoned with just the right blend of satire, urbane wit, and humor. So, as Booster Gold would say, buy, buy, buy!

While the widely-seen house ad for Booster Gold #1 that was included in Crisis on Infinite Earths #11 (and almost every other book DC published in October 1985) is more famous and much more widely seen than DC Releases, this handout was created specifically to promote books released on October 8, 1985 (including Crisis on Infinite Earths #11). Therefore, as Russ said, Booster's cover panel here is very likely the character's very first public appearance.

That's why you'll find copies going for $500 on eBay.

Personally, I'd rather spend my money on comics rather than advertisements for comics, but you do you.

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If you're starting to feel like tragic events are repeating themselves over and over, you might be a DC Comics reader.

In 1985, the original Crisis on Infinite Earths destroyed the DC Multiverse. Twenty years later, Infinite Crisis revisited the same territory and partially restored the DC Multiverse. Ten years after that, Convergence revisited the same territory and revealed that the DC Multiverse had existed in our hearts all along.

That was 7 years ago today.

It was in the pages of Convergence Booster Gold #2, released May 27, 2015, that we learned that the Booster Gold who appeared in the New 52 Justice League International was not actually the same person who had appeared in two volumes of comics named Booster Gold.

And it was also in the pages of Convergence Booster Gold #2 that the original Booster Gold died and was brought back to life as the newest Waverider.

That happened just in time for Waverider to arrive and help save the day in Convergence #8, also released May 27, 2015. How did he help? By empowering Brainiac, the very same creature who had caused the Convergence in the first place.

The reality created by Convergence lasted barely a year before Doctor Manhattan's tinkering in DC Universe: Rebirth resulted in awkward merging the pre- and post-New 52 realities to create a whole new continuity lying somewhere in between, a reality that has since been revised in Death Metal and is again being challenged in this summer's Dark Crisis.

Like I said, sometimes reading DC Comics is like being caught in a cosmic hamster wheel of trauma, a wheel that seems to be spinning faster and faster the longer we're on it.

However, the important lesson isn't that the multiverse is full of evil. The lesson is that every time evil rears its head, heroes will emerge to fight it.

Such is life in every universe.

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For years and years, artists believed that the best way to show what a comic strip character was thinking was to put their internal dialog in fluffy, bubbly word balloons. According to comics historian Brian Cronin, credit for that innovation belongs to Rudolph Dirks' Katzenjammer Kids newspaper comic strip in the early years of the 20th century.

However, at the dawn of the 21st century, this method began to fall out of favor in mainstream American superhero comics. Old-fashioned, abstract thought balloons were gradually replaced by the more "realistic" approach of putting the same internal dialog in square boxes, as though characters are narrating their behaviors after the fact.

Since this transition happened incrementally over time, it passed largely without comment. Which made me wonder, "When was the last time that Booster Gold used a thought balloon?"

The answer to this question is Superman #124, cover-dated June 1997.

So far as I've been able to tell, Booster Gold never thought again.

It just so happens that this issue also marks the last appearance of Booster's clunky late-90s armor, so it also represents something of bookend to his 1990s adventures. If loosing thought balloons is the price we had to pay to get Booster Gold back in tights, I think I can live with that.

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DC solicitations are out for August, and by my current count, Booster boosters can expect to see our hero make an appearance in at least 10 upcoming books (including reprints). That's a lot!

As we've already covered, Booster will be in August's Tales of the Human Target one-shot as well as several Dark Crisis issues.

And while we knew that Booster would be on the cover of the first issue of DC vs. Vampires: All-Out War, we are just now learning that he'll be on the 1:25 variant edition of the second issue by James Stokoe:

If you didn't know, "1:25 variant" means that for every 25 copies of the book your Local Comic Shop orders with the standard or regular variant covers, they'll get exactly one of those. The general rule of thumb in comic collecting is that you should generally expect to "pay the ratio" for these sorts of incentive variant covers: you pay approximately $25 for 1 copy at your LCS. In today's market, that's like, 5 gallons of gas!

These 1:25 covers will obviously be in limited supply, so if you want this (or any incentive variant — so named because the publisher is using it to create an incentive to buyers to purchase more copies than they might be otherwise initially inclined to order), I recommend you negotiate with your LCS ahead of time to try and strike a deal that will be worthwhile to both of you.

On the other hand, the collected edition of Blue and Gold is due on September 27 for a comparatively meager $19.99. And while I'm sure you already have all the individual issues, won't it be nice to have them all bound under one cover?

You can find all the August solicitations at GamesRadar.com. Spend wisely, Booster boosters.

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On Monday, I linked to a CBR interview with Dark Crisis writer Joshua Williamson. When I wrote that post, I didn't realize that Williamson had already tweeted Ethan Young's alternate cover for Dark Crisis #3 which features Blue and Gold:

No front-facing camera, Harley? Is that an iPhone 3?

That group is what CBR called the "Not Really" Justice League that Jon Kent will form in the wake of the Justice League's apparent death in Justice League #75. Williamson's tweet emphasizes "THERE IS NO JUSTICE LEAGUE." Given the League's history, that sounds especially ominous.

Longtime Booster boosters may recall that in the absence of a Justice League following the events of Infinite Crisis, Firehawk organized a new, self-proclaimed Justice League during the year-long 52. It lasted 18 pages before being defeated and disgraced... by Skeets.

See, a wormhole had opened in present-day Metropolis and a swarm of pirates had just descended on the city streets....
In hindsight, that probably should have been a job for Superman.

(Technically, that new League was thwarted by Skeets' corporeal body but not its consciousness, although that opens a whole 'nother can of unresolved worms about whether or not Skeets is truly sentient. But I digress.)

Of course, Firehawk's team didn't have a Booster Gold, much less two Blue Beetles. (And they presumably won't have to fight Skeets.) So maybe Superman Jr's team will have better luck against the all-consuming evil that effortlessly disintegrated Superman, Wonder Woman, and Martian Manhunter among others.

I wish the Not Really Justice League all the luck when Dark Crisis #3 drops this August. They're going to need it.

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