Almost all of Booster Gold's dialogue in Justice League America #32 is some sort of snarky comment on something one of his teammates has said. And that's why we love him!

Weirdly, Adam Hughes' art shows Booster's hair parted on his right side on this page, page 8, when it is parted on his left side (where character creator Dan Jurgens typically places the part) on pages 5 and 18. While that might lead you to believe that this page was flipped in production, the opposite is actually true. The original art for page 18 can be seen on ComicArtFans.com, making it clear that the Booster Gold/Blue Beetle/Fire panel was flipped on that page. I cannot find art for page 5 online, but I assume it was flipped there as well?

For the record, Booster Gold's part moved from side to side frequently during Kevin Maguire's time on the Justice League International, but Hughes will keep it pretty consistently on Booster's right side for the next few years.

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Arriving this week in a Local Comic Shop near you is the third (and final?) volume of the Justice League International Omnibus.

According to the solicitation, this issue (with a brand new wraparound cover by Kevin Maguire) reprints "stories from Justice League America #51-60, Secret Origins #33-35, Justice League America Annual #5, Green Lantern #18, Justice League Quarterly #2-5, JLA 80-Page Giant #1, Formerly Known as the Justice League #1-6, JLA: Classified #4-9, Justice League Europe #26-36, DC Retroactive: JLA - The '90s #1, Justice League Europe Annual #2, and Justice League International Special #2."

It's funny: when you're reading them as you go along, they didn't seem like so many comics, but in hindsight, that's a heck of a long list.

That's at least part of 46 different comics, which pretty much A) justifies the $150 price tag, and B) puts a cap on the Giffen/DeMatteis era (with the exception of Justice League 3000-3001, which is collected elsewhere).

And the best part is that it excludes the JLI's appearances under the pens of other writers, so if we want to, we can all just pretend that Identity Crisis and Countdown to Infinite Crisis never happened. I can live with that.

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Booster Gold spends most of his time in the background of Justice League International Annual #3 as one of many team members taking a world tour of JLI embassies. There's just not a lot of opportunity for him to open his mouth.

But he does get plenty of opportunity to play straight man to his comic foil, Blue Beetle.

As you can see, there's a running gag in this story about Booster making up a fake "Aunt Millie" just to tease Blue Beetle. Is there nothing these two knuckleheads won't do for a laugh? (That's why we love them!)

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In addition to being the final issue of Justice League International volume 1 (next issue the team will be downsized to just Justice League America), Justice League International #25 is also the first book-length team-up between Booster Gold and Blue Beetle. Historic!

My favorite page comes early, which is probably not a surprise to those of you who know that Ty Templeton is one of my favorite artists. He only drew the intro and outro pages of this issue (over Keith Giffen's layouts), with the rest handled by Mike McKone (also over Giffen).

But it's not just the art I love; almost every panel on page 3 has its own punchline!

Despite the early (and often) jokes, the main plot of this team-up issue is a vampire hunt that turns into an overt criticism of Western consumer culture which, in Twilight Zone style, questions who the real monsters are on plane Earth. As Booster and Beetle (and the reader) will eventually realize, it just might be our heroes.

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Yes, that banner up there says "one page at a time," but today you're getting two!

In 1989, a three-part story written by Cary Bates in Captain Atom #26 , #27, and #28 that more-or-less resolved the messiest parts of the backstory of why Captain Atom lied to the Justice League about his personal history.

(Turns out the adventures of the pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths Captain Atom were just a government cover story to disguise how Atom was really blackmailed into participating in the weapons test that gave him his powers by a criminal conspiracy of Vietnam vets in a plot stolen directly from Lethal Weapon. Like I said, it's messy.)

Anyway, the point here is that Booster Gold was one of the three Leaguers who confronted the good Captain with evidence of his mounting lies. Since Booster played a significant role in only the first two chapters of this story, appearing only on the first page of the third, I figured I might as well present my favorite pages from those two issues at the same time.

First is Captain Atom #26. As my favorite page, I could have chosen a sequence earlier in the book in which Booster, Blue Beetle, and Mister Miracle clasp hands then go undercover... by wearing sunglasses. But for full-page goodness, I'm going with page 22, in which a thief from the future living under an assumed name unironically demands "no more secrets"!

Yeah, the posed figures are stiff, but I'm enamored by the layout. Note how the top of the page is a separate panel presenting an establishing shot of the city skyline, and the tail on Booster's speech balloon acts like a pointer showing where they are, as well as allowing Booster to speak first despite being in the center of the page. I assume the balloons were all created by letterer Carrie Spiegel on top of Pat Broderick's art. Well done.

In the very next issue, Captain Atom #27, my favorite page is also based mostly on what Booster has to say. Despite never having been seen wearing a deerstalker cap or skis, our hero is suddenly an amateur detective and an expert skier!

And he flies faster than the Blue Beetle's bug? Oh, Booster, is there anything you can't do?

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