Although I tried on Monday, I can't say enough good things about this week's new hardcover reprint Booster Gold: The Big Fall.

In addition to all the great art, the book contains a 25-page "The Making of Booster Gold" appendix of historical detail, including among other things the aforementioned original art for Booster Gold #6, some promotional material from DC, pictures of Jurgens' original model for Skeets, and key to today's post, Jurgens' original pitch for the series, which reads in part:

Metropolis University, 2162. Twentieth Century Super Heroes 101 is in session and Professor Fairmont drones on and on. Michael Stewart, former amateur athlete surpreme and star quarterback of the football team is bored. To him, super heroes are a boring lot. A bunch of do gooders who just didn't know how to take advantage of a good situation.

Did you catch that? In Jurgen's original pitch, Booster Gold's "real" name was to be Micheal Stewart!

If you think that bit of ephemeral comic book trivia is as cool as I do, you'll love Booster Gold: The Big Fall, now available at your Local Comic Shop — and coming to bookstores next month, just in time for Christmas shopping season.

Comments (4) | Add a Comment | Tags: big fall dan jurgens reprints secret origins

Looking for something to give thanks for this year? Look no further than your Local Comic Shop, where you'll find this beauty come Wednesday!

photo tweeted by @thedanjurgens

Booster Gold: The Big Fall is the first full color reprint of the first year of Booster Gold comics originally published in late 1985. It only took 34 years!

The 320-page hardcover book retails for $39.99, but for that price you get 12 issues in full color (presumably using the same art currently available online at DCUniverse.com) printed on quality paper.

To give you a better idea what you might expect, here's the splash page from Booster Gold #1 scanned from my original copy:

And here's the same page reproduced online at Comixology.com:

As you can see, the difference is striking. (Kudos to DC for not "correcting" Tom Ziuko's coloring of Booster's original star.) And that's not all you can expect from this reprint.

According to advance solicitations from Diamond Comics (the exclusive comics distributor for DC Comics), The Big Fall will also contain "design material, unpublished story pages and more." That's vague, but it may refer to art that Dan Jurgens teased on Twitter back in April showing Booster Gold paying a visit to the Fortress of Solitude originally intended for Booster Gold #6. Seeing unused art pages from the earliest adventures of our hero should be quite the enticement for Booster boosters everywhere.

Buy a copy and make Skeets (and yourself) very happy.

Comments (3) | Add a Comment | Tags: big fall comixology.com dan jurgens dcuniverse.com new releases reprints tom ziuko twitter.com

I'm not going to lie and tell you I understand what was happening between Booster Gold and Harley Quinn in last month's Harley Quinn #66. I have even less idea what's going on in today's Harley Quinn #67.

What I do know is that with art by Dan Jurgens, Norm Rapmund, and Hi-Fi, it's going to look great.

Harley's right. Martian Manhunter's funeral was in second issue.

If you want to see more, Batman-News.com has the preview.

Thanks to Rob Snow for that news.

By the way, since you're already on your way to your LCS, consider looking on the back issue racks for the most recent issue of Action Comics. The variant "DCeased" cover to issue #1016 included a zombiefied Booster Gold. I missed that when the issue was released 2 weeks ago. Thankfully, Logan Peterson didn't. Good spot, Logan.

Buy these issues and make Skeets happy.

Comments (2) | Add a Comment | Tags: action comics dan jurgens harley quinn hi-fi designs logan peterson new releases norm rapmund rob snow

Zero Hour, DC's attempt to correct lingering problems left over from simplifying their multiverse in Crisis on Infinite Earths, is 25 years old. My, how time flies.

To celebrate, the company is releasing a $150 Zero Hour 25th Anniversary Omnibus which contains over a thousand pages of reprint comics. That's about 14¢ a page, a deal by modern standards.

Booster Gold didn't play a big role in Zero Hour, but he is present (and does get in a few lines) before time is rewritten to erase him from existence. (Spoiler Alert: It's only temporary.)

Thanks to series author and artist Dan Jurgens, Booster also represents the future (in his classic, high-collar costume) in the accompanying fold-out timeline of the re-ordered DC Universe. That's always cool.

Hopefully the Omnibus will include the fold-out. It's not much of a celebration without Booster Gold!

Comments (0) | Add a Comment | Tags: dan jurgens jerry ordway new releases zero hour

If the 1980s was about anything, that thing was big business. Greed was good, deal making was an art, and Capitalism finally conquered Communism. Corporate interests dominated politics, and commercialism owned everything else. Into that environment came the original superhero salesman: Booster Gold.

No cover of the era exemplifies that aspect of our hero more than Booster Gold #11 (1986).

Pencils by Dan Jurgens, Inks by Jerry Ordway

This image is a delightful snapshot of time when J.R. deserved to be shot, and Micheal Knight was a lone crusader in a dangerous world. Booster does his best Don Johnson impersonation in his square-shouldered white linen blazer. He winks at us over his Max Headroom shades, reassuring us that he knows what cool is. If this guy is selling, you're buying.

It might look like an ad for the most 1980s car ever, but what Booster is really selling here is comic books. You can't own a Brysler Boostermobile, but you can own this comic. I'd buy that for a dollar. And I did. Because I was cool, too.

Comments (3) | Add a Comment | Tags: covers dan jurgens favorite covers jerry ordway