Today's completely trivial statistic: 36 years after the first appearance of Booster Gold (on October 29), there are still 28 different days of the year that have not yet seen a Booster Gold comic released.

This includes Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, as well as September 11, and, ironically, my birthday. As it happens, September 14 is not one of those days.

There has been exactly one Booster Gold comic released on the 14th day of September, and that occurred one year ago today, in 2021, when Booster Gold appeared in these four panels of Justice League #67 drawn by Phil Hester:

pages 3 and 4

pages 7 and 8

pages 16

pages 19

It's a hallmark of issue writer Brian Michael Bendis to give everyone something to say in his crowd shots, so it's a shame that Booster doesn't have any lines. Oh, well.

Maybe Booster will get a speaking part in his next book released on September 14. Here's looking at you, 2027!

Comments (0) | Add a Comment | Tags: brian michael bendis justice league phil hester statistics

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.

Comments (0) | Add a Comment | Tags: brian michael bendis justice league new releases

Booster booster Curtiss Schofield was reading comics over the weekend, and he noticed this "tweet" from the great Metropolitan newspaper, Daily Planet, on the first page of Action Comics #1014:

Who wrote that? Was it Action writer Brian Michael Bendis? You've got some pull with Warner, Bendis. Stop trolling us Blue and Gold fans and use your influence to get that movie made!

Thanks for the spot, Curtiss.

Comments (2) | Add a Comment | Tags: action comics blue beetle brian michael bendis curtiss schofield movies

SPOILER WARNING: Today's topic could be considered a spoiler for Legion of Super-Heroes: Millennium #1, so scroll no further if you want to be surprised.

...

...

...

Still here?

Okay. Let's continue.

Brian Michael Bendis has been very careful to disguise the identity of his series protagonist, a character familiar to longtime DC Comics enthusiasts. However, I don't think I'm giving much away to say that character is the split personality anti-hero(s) Rose and Thorn, who has somehow gained immortality and is left wandering through the "future" timeline of DC mainstream continuity on her way of reintroducing the Legion of Super-Heroes to a new generation of readers.

I think that's a pretty cool way to immerse an audience into the deep-end of continuity, in no small part because Rose/Thorn played the same role for Booster Gold back in 1986.

In 2015, I asked Dan Jurgens why he chose to use Rose in his original Booster Gold series. He said

First of all, I found her to be an amazingly interesting character.

Plus, since [Rose and Thorn] hadn't appeared in such a long time, it was fairly easy to adjust the character a bit. Tweak the costume, etc. Tailor it to Booster a bit more, that kind of thing.

As you can see, Bendis is taking a page from Jurgens' playbook here. We're not mad; Bendis is including Booster Gold in the next issue to re-encounter his old partner. Although Booster will be younger and Rose will be much, much older than their last meeting. Such are the pitfalls of time travel.

You'll find Legion of Super-Heroes: Millennium #2 in your Local Comic Shop on October 2.

Comments (1) | Add a Comment | Tags: brian michael bendis dan jurgens legion of super-heroes thorn

As reported by The Blot on Twitter, that the Bryan Hitch alternate cover to Brian Michael Bendis' upcoming Legion of Super-Heroes: Millennium mini-series has been revealed, and it prominently features the Man of Gold.

Per colorist Alex Sinclair's Instagram:

This isn't a single cover, by the way. When Bendis originally released the black and white inks (in *his* Instagram), he made it clear that this wasn't the cover to one book but two!

EXCLUSIVE! I was just sent the variant cover art for Millennium #1-2, which interconnect, by Bryan Hitch. @dccomics #dcnation #legionofsuperheroes #legionofsuperheroesmillenium #supergirl #boostergold #batmanbeyond #omac #kamandi #notmessingaround #preorder #longlivethelegion

Looked at that way, Booster will be front and center on the cover of issue two. Yes, please!

Thanks, Blot. I'll be standing in line outside my LCS when Legion of Super-Heroes: Millennium #2 is released on October 2.

Comments (0) | Add a Comment | Tags: alex sinclair blot brian michael bendis bryan hitch covers instagram.com legion of super-heroes twitter.com