On Wednesday, DC gave a sneak peek of its December solicitations via DCComics.com. Blue and Gold was not mentioned, but there is another new title that sounds suspiciously like it.

And for fans looking to laugh, or just looking for a bargain, it's ONE-STAR SQUADRON.

From Harvey, Ringo and Eisner nominee Mark Russell (WONDER TWINS, EXIT STAGE LEFT: THE SNAGGLEPUSS CHRONICLES) and Eisner and Ringo winner Steve Lieber (SUPERMAN'S PAL JIMMY OLSEN), comes a one-of-a-kind six-issue limited series that promises Superman-Level Service at Bizarro Prices!

ONE-STAR SQUADRON is DC's Super Hero team, where heroism meets capitalism. This ragtag group of heroes led by Red Tornado is here to provide service with a smile. All you have to do is send a request via their on-demand hero app and they'll answer any call. Whether it's a children's birthday party or an alien invasion, no job is too small or too big in this story about the Super Heroes without a billion dollar fortune or Fortress of Solitude to fall back on... heroes like Red Tornado, Power Girl, Gangbuster, and Minute Man. Follow these working stiffs as they work for a living while trying to parse one of the great mysteries of the world--just who's signing those checks and why?

Poor Power Girl and Red Tornado. They used to be Justice Leaguers. My, how the mighty have fallen.

Hey, wait a second! "One of a kind"? Former Leaguers Blue Beetle and Booster Gold announced their own on-demand super-hero service only last week in Blue and Gold #2!

It won't surprise any readers of this site that I've always loved the old, comedic Hero Hotline concept. I'm also a big, big fan of Mark Russell's sharply satirical point-of-view. So I expect great things from this new mini-series.

But in the long run, I'm hoping that Blue and Gold Restoration will be Coke to One-Star Squadron's Pepsi.

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Look who makes a cameo appearance in today's Justice League #67:

Er, I meant specifically Booster Gold. He's in the background of several panels, which, frankly, is a bigger presence than he has in most comic books. And at least he's in good company. Vixen and Blue Devil are also here to mutely decorate the backgrounds, and few characters are given any more than a single line of dialog. What you see from longtime League stalwarts Black Canary and Green Arrow above is their only notable contribution to the proceedings. If the Justice League roster needs to include someone with a colorful name to stand around and state the obvious, Booster Gold can do that!

Look, I'm not going to lie. As you can probably tell by now, I don't personally care for Brian Michael Bendis's take on the Justice League. The unique quirks of his personal style aside, his characters don't act much like the DC heroes I've been reading about for decades. I find myself reading his issues as though they represent an alternate-universe team that, while far from "ultimate," could perhaps occupy Earth-B.

(Historical footnote: In the Bronze Age of DC Comics, Earth-B was the unofficial universe of writer Bob Haney's impossible, out-of-continuity Brave and the Bold stories. That universe was presumably destroyed by the Crisis on Infinite Earths. I suggest the new Earth-B in DC's all-new, all-different post-52, post-Death Metal Omniverse cosmology should be home to the stories of Brian Bendis.)

So I can't exactly recommend this title to anyone. But we readers don't get to choose which books Booster Gold appears in, do we? As a great poet once said, "Ours not to reason why, ours but to whine and buy."

Buy this issue and make Skeets happy.

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Sorry, low content mode today as I'm still busy re-reading Blue and Gold #2 — now available at fine comic stores near you! Have you bought yours yet?

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Justice League America #56 was released on September 17, 1991, thirty years ago next week. Its mawkish story takes place in the middle of the too-long "Breakdowns" event marking the denouement of the United Nations-sponsored Justice League International era.

This chapter focuses on the forsaken Leaguers struggling to adapt to life without a league. Among them, Fire and Ice struggle to join a modeling agency, and Blue Beetle finds that his poor physical health will prevent him from joining the Booster Gold-led Conglomerate. There aren't a lot of "bwah-ha-ha" moments here.

No matter how you look at it, "Breakdowns" was not a particularly good story, and this wasn't a particularly good issue. As much as we want them to be, not all comics can be masterpieces.

But this comic book is worth a look back today if for no other reason than for its cover by Chris Sprouse and Bruce D. Patterson. As pretty as it was at the time, it was made more poignant by events that transpired almost exactly ten years after the issue's publication.

#NeverForget

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Earlier this month, Timothy Donohoo recapped the Extreme Justice team for the CBR.com article "Booster Gold, Blue Beetle & Captain Atom Formed the Most Extreme Justice League."

I'm not sure from the article whether Donohoo ever actually read any of the Extreme Justice issues (half of his history is based on the not very accurate 2001 JLA: Incarnations mini-series produced five years after Extreme Justice got the axe) , but at the very least it's nice to see someone saying nice things about one of my personal favorite (but widely forgotten) comic series:

Also fitting the team name was the art, which redesigned many classic characters to fit in with the growing popularity of books at Image Comics. It was one of the few DC books that attempted to ride this wave, and it was rather obvious in its methods. Scowls and gritted teeth are a constant sight, with muscles and breasts being more emphasized. Booster Gold got a ridiculous-looking armor that made him look like Valiant's X-O Manowar crossed with a football player, while Blue Beetle was rather blatantly drawn to resemble Todd McFarlane's take on Spider-Man.

No, really, that's about as nice a thing as anyone ever says about Extreme Justice.

And he's not wrong:

Ah, the good, old nineteen-nineties. Some days, I really do miss you.

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