If you can make it to your Local Comic Shop today, and if your shop hasn't already been closed by the ongoing COVID-19 emergency measures, you might consider picking up Harley Quinn: The Final Trial, a collection reprinting Booster Gold's appearances in Harley Quinn #66 and #67.

Sadly, as I'm sure most of you who visit this site already know, this is to be the last New Comics Day for a while. Diamond Comics Distributors, the sole distributor of all major American comic publishers, has announced that they are not shipping anything "until further notice." I don't disagree that this is probably a necessity in the current environment, but I'm still disappointed by the news.

I've been buying comics once a week since before the inception of the direct market, so I honestly don't know what life is like without a weekly trip to the comics shop. I feel a little like I've lost a limb.

(Once upon a time, I commented to a friend that I didn't understand how people could go a week without comics. Sometime later, I had to miss a week while out of town — I was literally driving across the country — and he teased me about it. The moral to this story, I guess, is be careful what you say to your friends.)

Not that the distribution halt will make all that much difference to Booster boosters. So far as I'm aware, there's only one book guest staring Booster in the current pipeline. On the up side, Booster Gold has already appeared, by my count, in over 850 comics in the past 35 years. That's plenty of re-reading material for any apocalypse.

Retailers and publishers are going to be the ones to really suffer as their revenue streams are closed indefinitely. (Forbes.com has a pretty good piece on what this may mean to the future of the direct marketplace.) They can use all the support we can give them. If you can afford it, consider filling in the holes in your Booster Gold comics collection by mail order from your LCS. After all, we need them to still be there when Diamond finally re-opens their doors, whenever that may be.

UPDATE 2020-03-25: not thirty minutes before I walked in the door of my LCS this afternoon, my local government announced that starting tomorrow, all local "nonessential" businesses must close for the next two weeks. Which certainly means it's a good thing for them that Diamond won't be shipping while they cannot receive the stock. Hooray, silver lining!

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The contrast between justice, vengeance, and redemption. Fate versus free will. Heroic self-sacrifice. All of those themes are factors in why I consider Booster Gold #18 among the twelve best Booster Gold comics.

The story, "Showdown," written and illustrated by Dan Jurgens, opens with a montage of Booster Gold in training. Though this is just a prologue to the main story, it sets the stage for what's coming. It lets us, the readers, see that Booster Gold is willing to put in some effort to be the best super hero that he can be. In other words, he's working at being good. If you've never read a Booster Gold story before, you now know where our hero stands.

Booster Gold is the hero in this story, but not the protagonist. That role belongs to Broderick, a federal agent who always gets his man. While Booster walks the path of the hero, Broderick's road has become considerably darker ever since he let his self-righteous hatred be his guide.

Broderick's obsession with Booster Gold is born from familiar circumstances. He had once been among Michael "Booster" Carter's biggest fans when the youngster was playing quarterback for Gotham University. As is so often the case, when Booster was caught cheating in a gambling scandal, Broderick took the news of his hero's transgression as a personal slight.

After "Booster" Carter stole a time machine, Broderick swore he would bring him to justice, no matter how far he had to go to do it. The former object of Broderick's affection became an object of disgust and hatred.

He chases Booster to the past, where he is driven to break the law to survive. He soon confirms that Booster has become a hero to the masses, a revelation that only stokes his hatred. How backwards this 20th century where thieves are the heroes and policemen are driven to steal!

Broderick's determination finally pays off when he ambushes Booster Gold outside of his own mansion. Booster is accompanied by a date, but Broderick doesn't care. It's a sign of how far he's let his obession drive him from the path of the righteous that his prey cares more about the lives of bystanders than the dutiful "officer of the law" does.

Booster leads Broderick on an excting chase through the back alleys of downtown Metropolis before the confrontation plays out exactly as the brilliant cover promised.

The law man has Booster dead to rights and is about to pull the trigger — becoming judge, jury, and executioner in one — when something unexpected happens. A second tragedy is unfolding nearby. Someone is robbing a liquor store. Booster uses the opportunity to remind Broderick just how far he's fallen.

The pair put aside their differences long enough to stop the robbery and save innocent lives, allowing Booster to demonstrate by action that he's not the the villain of Broderick's warped imagination.

Afterwards, Broderick is faced with a harsh choice: punish "Booster" Carter for crimes he admits he has committed and take a hero off the streets, or allow a guilty man to walk away from justice for the sake of the greater good.

His world shattered, Broderick fades into the shadows. Did he ever find a way out? I sure hope so.

This issue touches on a lot of great questions about what a hero is. Can someone steal for the right reasons? What is the boundaries between vengeance and justice? It's the asking of those questions that makes this, without a doubt, one of The Best Booster Gold Stories Ever.

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Last week, Booster booster Ariel complained about Booster's short haircut worn at the end of his run in the 1980s. He doesn't care for it. To each their own.

Personally, I happen to find it fetching, in no small part because that's the style Booster wore on one of my favorite covers: Booster Gold #18 (1987)!

Maybe I'm just old school, but I love it when the image on the cover of a comic foretells what'll be happening inside its pages. Booster Gold lying defeated in the gutter? An unknown gunman with our hero in his sights? How will our hero ever get out of this? Open the book and find out!

Dan Jurgens and Jerry Ordway really know how to put together a cover, don't they? In Western culture, our eyes are trained to wander to the bottom right of a page. Jurgens is clearly aware of this visual scanning tendency and redirects our eyes back up through the body of the trenchcoated killer, down the barrel of the gun straight to Booster's heart. Powerful stuff!

(Who did that color? Was it issue colorist Gene D'Angelo? The warm red and gold really pop against that receding, cool green background. It's simple but effective use of complementary color theory.)

In addition to the beautiful artwork, I have to admit in the spirit of full disclosure that part of my admiration is likely due to the story within. It's one of my favorites. In fact, I recently declared it one of the 12 Best Booster Gold Stories Ever. I'll explain why on Monday.

See you next week!

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Booster Gold was in Year of the Villain: Hell Arisen #2 and #3, so it seemed pretty likely he'd be in the final issue of the mini-series released today, even if the announcement solicitation wasn't explicit.

YEAR OF THE VILLAIN: HELL ARISEN #4
written by JAMES TYNION IV
art and cover by STEVE EPTING
This is it! Lex Luthor has gathered a strike force of villains he's leveled up to be the baddest bad guys around-Captain Cold, Oracle, Solomon Grundy, Black Manta, and Lobo, each and every one a recipient of one of Lex's dark gifts.

But the Batman Who Laughs has his own army of infected heroes. Six hundred sixty-six of them, all transformed into their worst selves.

It's a final showdown between two of DC's most iconic villains, all to curry the favor of Perpetua. Whoever wins will take over the Multiverse alongside her. Does Lex ascend, or does he get laid low? Does the Batman Who Laughs finally remake the DC Universe in his own image? Either way, life for our heroes will never be the same.

Sure, would-be heroes are a dime a dozen in the DC Universe, but six hundred and sixty-six of them? That's got to be, like, everyone. I'm not sure I'm ready for Evil G'nort.

Anyway, we don't have to guess whether or not Booster is in issue #4 because CBR.com has a preview, and...

...yup, that's Booster Gold, all right.

Assuming your Local Comic Shop isn't closed by your local government, brave a plague to buy this issue and makes Skeets happy! (And enjoy it, because Booster doesn't look to appear anywhere in the June solicitations, which you can find now on Newsarama.com.)

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You all know Cort, who has graciously shared his Booster Gold commissions with us. Well, Cort doesn't just get Booster Gold sketches from professionals. He also gets them from his friends. Check 'em out:

DNR_L (Twitter)

Laowrart (Twitter)

nerdmurder (Twitter)

mangonisium (Instagram)

Cort Carpenter (Twitter)

Thanks for sharing, Cort. You've got some pretty talented friends. (Dare I say they all look Boosterrific? I dare!)

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