Today marks the negative 418th birthday of Jon Michael "Booster" Carter, born this day in the year 2442.

Congratulations, Booster!

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Justice League America #53 is not a great comic book. Part of the problem is the scenario, the first chapter of the "Breakdowns" storyline, which focuses heavily on a Justice League International grieving over a comatose Max Lord while experiencing a literal existential crisis in the United Nations General Assembly. That's pretty heavy stuff that isn't traditionally the type of crisis that you can solve by putting on brightly colored pajamas and punching something.

Sadly, this issue's artists, Chris Wozniak and Bruce D. Patterson, aren't able to elevate the often maudlin script. Wozniak lacks his predecessors' mastery of realistic and consistent facial expressions that so often made Maguire and Hughes' work so brilliant, and the figures here all look like they were sculpted in Play-Doh. Neither does it help that in such a wordy comic, usual letterer Bob Lappan has been temporarily replaced by Willie Schubert, so even the words don't look right for a JLI title. It's not a particularly pleasant reading experience.

But any comic book with Booster Gold in it is a good book, even if he's only here in a supporting role and even if he doesn't wear his costume.

I choose the above page 10 as my favorite mostly because Booster's inclusion there in the bubble makes it the last time the classic Justice League International team would ride into action together as a United Nations-sanctioned team. Where are they headed? The sewer. It's a fitting end to the JLI's original "Bwah-ha-ha" era.

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Justice League Task Force #37 (1996)

The gang looks happier every year!

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The text under the masthead above currently reads "It has been 83 Days since Booster Gold last appeared in an in-continuity DCU comic book." Judging by the contents of DC's March solicitations, which is now available at AIPTComics.com and gives no indication that any new Booster Gold adventures will be coming before the end of winter, Booster boosters can look forward to at least 99 more Booster-free days to come.

That's 182 days (6 months!), which is a long time, sure, but it's only the seventh longest we've ever gone between Booster Gold appearances. The last time our hero was trapped in an alternate universe (see: Justice League International Volume 3 Annual), he was absent from comics for 238 days. Surely this absence won't be as long as that, right? Right?

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As Armageddon 2001 meandered its way through the 1991 DC annuals, the Justice League was dealing with its own crisis as founder and team glue Max Lord lay in a coma. This gave Waverider a perfect opportunity in Justice League America Annual #5 to inspect the probable futures of several Justice Leaguers in quick succession in his search to find the future Monarch.*

The visions he saw were all of a shared future in which Martian Manhunter is a cookie guru, Guy Gardner led a cult of personality, Fire was engaged to marry Oberon, and Booster Gold had returned to the 25th century, spent time in jail for his previous crime, then resumed his old job at the Space Museum.

This page reads a little differently after Countdown.

Booster actually has a charming dual role in this issue, supporting his teammates in the present, and in the future, stealing another time machine to put his fractured team back together. For a guy often accused of being a screw-up, Booster has always been a big hero behind the scenes.

* It's no coincidence that herein Waverider disguises himself as Captain Atom, whom he will dramatically fail to investigate a few weeks later in Justice League Europe Annual #2. I'd be inclined to say "spoiler warning" here, but this is definitely not a spoiler. As DC editorial decreed, Captain Atom is not Monarch.

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