The first week of the new year brings the conclusion to the battle between the JLI and Peraxxus in Justice League International #5, or so solicitations for next month's issue would have us believe. Perhaps a more pressing question is still "who is the woman in black on the cover?"

The last time we saw the woman in black on a solicited cover, she was removed from the final product. This time she remains on the final cover (as seen on DC's The Source blog). Is she a new character to the title or an editorial oversight? Buy this issue and satisfy Skeets' curiosity.

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Frequent site contributor Morgenstern recently drew my attention to the solicited cover for Ray #3 appearing on DC's The Source blog. Morgenstern said, "to me it looked exactly like the JLI #2 cover."

The cover on the left was drawn by Aaron Lopresti and the cover on the right was drawn by Jamal Igle. It sure looks like Morgenstern has a point.

Booster Gold appears to be a bit of a trend setter. Two covers with a very similar motif within six months of one another: coincidence or crib? Morgenstern wondered if both of these covers were based on an older, pre-existing cover. Anyone have any ideas?

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Adjust your bookmarks: Russ Burlingame's "International Exchange" column has a new permanent home on comicbook.com. Here's hoping that the new location is a good fit for Burlingame; we need "International Exchange" to last for years to come! Where else are we going to get great Q&A's with Booster's creator like this:

IX: After reading some comments by Morganstern [sic] over at the Boosterrific message boards, I was wondering: Was it a conscious parallel that Peraxxus is basically in this for the money, which in some ways evokes how most people perceive Booster at this early stage in his career?

DJ: I think that's stretching things a bit too far. I don't know that I'd say that Peraxxus is quite so interested in money. Think of this more as his purpose... this is what he does. He provides a service that people need and collects for it.

But it isn't always money. He's a trader.

No matter where you're doing it, Russ, keep up the good work!

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The DC solicitation for today's Justice League International #4 hints that the team has recently been defeated by the Signalmen and will soon be defeated by Peraxxus, a new interstellar foe bent on the destruction of Earth who looks nothing like the old Mongul. That's a lot of failure at the four-month mark of the new series. Hopefully things will get better soon for our Booster Gold-led JLI!

For the record, Russ Burlingame already confirmed with writer Dan Jurgens that Peraxxus is not Mongul in the second edition of his "International Exchange" column at theouthousers.com. Thanks to Eyz from G33k Life for the Mongul panel above.

Buy this issue and make Skeets happy.

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Russ Burlingame's latest "International Exchange" column with Dan Jurgens will soon be live at The Outhouse. A preview of the column is already posted at Comic Book.com. Jurgens seems to be everywhere right now -- in addition to last week's two linked interviews, Jurgens is also interviewed at Comic Book Movie -- but Burlingame still finds a way to get some good information from the typically tight-lipped Jurgens, even if it isn't strictly Booster Gold related.

ComicBook.com: Hey, whatever happened to thought balloons? You never really see them anymore, and I always kinda look at Guy's monologue at the end [of Justice League International #3] and think, "If only he'd been quieter...!".

DJ: Thought balloons have largely disappeared from comics, in general. There are circumstances where they work, others where they don't. My general approach is that if one member of the team has thought balloons, let's say Rocket Red, then they all should. And Batman never should, in my view.

I suspect that Booster's last thought balloons appeared in Extreme Justice, 16 years ago. These days internal dialogue is almost always replaced by first person narrative boxes. This isn't necessarily a narrative improvement as much as it is an artistic convention.

That said, it is awfully hard to image Batman showing thought balloons in a team setting in 2011, isn't it?

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