I should probably warn you up front: my favorite page from Justice League Quarterly #8 is the last page of the story, and therefore contains spoilers.

Sure, I could have chosen a different page. Booster Gold is in two of the stories in that anthology, though I definitely prefer the second, "Tomorrow Belongs to Geralyn," especially in light of how Booster's career will change in the wake of 52 over a decade later.

It begins with a street urchin picking Booster's pocket in a diner, the discovery that the urchin is key to Booster's personal past, and ends with, well, this page. It's heartwarming, really.

Not that we should be surprised by that. It's written by Elliot S! Maggin, one of DC's premier Bronze Age scribes.

So if you don't want to be spoiled by the "twist" ending of a 12-page short story from 1992, turn away!

...

You have been warned.

See? So spoilery. (It's even better with context. Trust me.)

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For what it's worth, page 9 is probably my favorite full page in 1992's Superman #7. It depicts Waverider taking Superman through the timestream to Vanishing Point. But instead of showing you that page, with nary a Booster Gold in sight, I'm instead going to cheat today and show you my favorite sequence of panels from that issue. Two of them, actually.

First up is this sequence from page 21, in which the Linear Men detail just how important Booster Gold is to DC continuity:

For a long time, that was probably my favorite. But I find I now prefer this sequence on page 3, which in hindsight of how Booster's career has changed over time, reads even better now than it did thirty years ago:

Those are two pretty good sequences for Booster Gold fans in an issue otherwise light on Booster Gold content.

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After being captured by an alien who claims to own the entire Earth (a plot device that probably sounds familiar to readers of Blue and Gold #5), Booster Gold doesn't have much to do in Justice League America #68 but serve as a background wall decoration.

Fun fact: The Matrix was released 7 years after this comic!

To be honest, the H.R. Giger-inspired page 12, above, is not really my favorite page in the issue. I prefer both the giant Guy Gardner taking up all of page 1 and the sequence of lonely, heartbroken Ice wandering an abandoned Edwards Air Force Base on page 9. But Booster isn't on those pages.

In fact, Booster isn't on most of the pages in this issue. I even considered skipping this issue entirely, and I would have if Booster hadn't played such a significant role in the first half of this story. After the big build up in the previous issue, it would have felt wrong to leave Booster's storyline just... hanging.

(Sorry. Not sorry.)

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After a long summer of capturing the heroes of Earth one by one, Eclipso made his big move in Eclipso: The Darkness Within #2, forcing the heroes to confront the lengths they were willing to go to in order to save the world from the Prince of Darkness.

But can any of us really "kill" the darkness within ourselves, Rex?

Call me a prude, but I do love it when superhero comics are morality plays, especially when the first character to reveal a hard stance against killing is the same one most people would name as the least ethical. Booster Gold is nothing if not always full of surprises.

Spoiler alert for a 1992 story: the heroes win. And only some of them have to kill somebody. Days are longer in the summer, so Eclipso would have smarter to lead a winter event story. Maybe next time.

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To recap: when last we left our heroes during the 1992 "Darkness Within" event, the Justice League and the rest of the heroes of the DCU were fighting for their very survival against the awesome corrupting powers of Eclipso, who had just taken his greatest prize, Superman, starting a race against time to find the Man of Steel before Eclipso could unleash the Kryptonian's powers at sunset.

Which brings us to Adventures of Superman Annual #4, and Booster Gold to save the day!

A redheaded Brazilian?

I'd make a joke here about discovering that Booster can read, but he's really just flipping past the articles to look at the pictures. Sigh. Oh, Booster, you really are your own worst enemy.

Look, Booster Gold and Superman have thrown down several times by now, and I'd like to tell you that this is the occasion when our Golden Boy finally taught Big Blue a lesson... but no.

I won't spoil the story further except to say that this issue is the penultimate chapter in this event, and about a third of the pages are used to set up the finale. Still, it's a pretty good battle with consistent characterization, solid (if unexceptional) sequential art, and a heroic tone, which combine to make me nostalgic for the comics of yesteryear.

(Footnote: As it happened, I was listening to the soundtrack to Kpop Demon Hunters during my latest re-read of this and by chance started "Takedown" as the heroes launched into their fight with Eclipsed Superman [page 9]. It's no Dark Side of the Moon during Wizard of Oz, but I thought it made a pretty good backing track for this particular fight. YMMV.)

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