The fans have spoken, and they've said pretty much what I'd expected.

Last week's poll question: Should Booster Gold be in a romantic relationship with Harley Quinn? (48 votes)

Let's see. In the past 35 years, Booster Gold's biggest romantic liaisons have been with a spoiled movie star, a Senator's daughter turned super hero, an entertainment critic, and now an insane psychiatrist. Our boy doesn't really have a "type," does he?

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We've reached the halfway point of my list of the twelve best Booster Gold comics, and number 6 is arguably the darkest story in the list. As you can see from the cover of Superman #74, Doomsday has arrived.

This story is a tragedy. An alien monster has crashed on Earth and is marching his way towards Metropolis, leaving a trail of unimaginable destruction in its wake, including the broken body of Blue Beetle, as we see in the first panel.

Unfortunately for Mitch and his family, Doomsday's path leads straight through their house. Unfortunately for the Justice League, they are Mitch's only hope.

Dan Jurgens is at his best as a writer when he scales his stories down to a human level. That skill is on display here, as several early pages are devoted to the introduction of Mitch and his family. (Angry teenage Mitch is so very 90s, but that's when this comic was created.) They put a face on the danger, giving the audience a reason to care about Doomsday's rampage and creating a dramatic tension often missing from these sorts of super-heroic fisticuffs. We see the stakes driving the heroes to fight and win. If the heroes fail...

Well, heroes can't fail, can they?

The following page contains 8 consecutive panels of Booster Gold taking a beating unlike any he's seen before or since. It's not just brutal --

The issue makes it clear that Booster's sacrifice is a heroic one. Booster Gold is giving his life so that others may live. That's the definition of a real hero.

And that's why I include it among the The Best Booster Gold Stories Ever.

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If you venture to your Local Comic Shop today, you may find the collected Year of the Villain: Hell Arisen TPB among the new releases. Then again, you may not. Year of the Villain: Hell Arisen #3 was so popular, it's already been through three printings, so it's not hard to imagine that the trade collecting the whole series won't also be popular.

If you didn't know by now, Booster Gold can be seen in three of the Year of the Villain: Hell Arisen mini-series' four issues. He doesn't have a single line of dialogue in any of those issues, so it's kind of like a series of glorified cameo appearances.

And since we're on the subject of cameo appearances:

Superman: Man of Tomorrow #7, words by Dave Wielgosz; art by Miguel Menonca, Yasmine Putri, David Baron

On the bottom left you'll see Booster Gold appearing in the digital first Superman: Man of Tomorrow #7, now available at Comixology.com. Those stories will presumably be printed on real-world paper one of these days, though DC has yet to announce a date. I'll try to keep you posted. Thanks to fabri24cr for calling our attention to that.

Booster Gold is on the left side of this panel, too, though which Booster Gold from which corner of the Multiverse, I can't be sure. That image of Greg Capullo art comes from this recent Tweet from Scott Snyder, the writer behind this summer's multiverse-spanning Dark Nights: Death Metal event. The panel doesn't appear in Dark Nights: Death Metal #1, which was released yesterday, but you still might want to pick that comic up so you'll have a chance at deciphering what's happening when Booster does arrive on the scene. (Again, thanks to fabri24cr for deciphering that the panel has to be Death Metal-related.)

DCEASED: Dead Planet #1, words by Tom Taylor; at by Trevor Hairsine, Stefano Gaudinao, Gig Baldissini

Booster Gold appears on the right for a change in the upcoming DCEASED: Dead Planet #1. Why not the left side of the panel? Maybe because he's a ghost. (Well, not a ghost, exactly. Booster didn't die in DCEASED: A Good Day To Die so much as he was erased from history. Therefore, this is really more of an hallucinatory flashback courtesy the tortured memory of Jon Constantine than it is an actual cameo appearance.) Dead Planet #1 is due out next week in two weeks, and I might have missed it if not for Booster booster Logan Peterson pointing it out. The preview is already available on CBR.com.

It's starting to look like the summer of Booster Gold.

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The first time Harley Quinn and Booster Gold met at a lunch counter in Heroes in Crisis #1, they didn't exactly hit it off.

A little over a year later, when they were re-introduced in a meet-cute in a karaoke bar in Harley Quinn #70, their relationship took a considerably different turn.

That's quite an emotional one-eighty. It sure looks like someone needs relationship counseling.

Personally, I've never been much into 'shipping. I've typically tried to keep my nose out of other people's personal business in the hopes that they would return the favor. Generally speaking, I think Booster Gold should be able to date whoever he likes.

However.

Harley Quinn, Booster? Really? Do you really think it's a good idea to make goo-goo eyes at the Joker's crazy former flame? Does anyone?

This week's poll question: Should Booster Gold be in a romantic relationship with Harley Quinn? Please visit the Boosterrific Polls page to view results for this week's poll.

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DC announced late Wednesday that it intends to release a summer anthology special, DC Cybernetic Summer. Everything that Booster Gold fans need to know is on Dan Mora's cover.

That's right, it's Skeets! (This is, I think, the first time Skeets has appeared on a cover without Booster. Good job, little buddy!)

The 80-page giant will include at least 10 stories. CRB.com has the whole list, but the important one is

Booster Gold, Blue Beetle and Skeets in "The Boys of Summer" by Heath Corson and Scott Koblish

I've already started sewing my mask so I'll be ready when this book lands in my Local Comic Shop on July 28. (A Tuesday? That's going to take some getting used to).

Thanks to Rob Snow and Modinda for the alert.

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