DC's July solicitations came out late last week, and as Rob Snow wrote to me, tongue firmly in cheek, "still no Absolute Booster." Phew.

But there's not much run-of-the-mill Booster Gold, either, except for his inclusion in a couple of collections, including the inevitable Absolute Power Omnibus and another collection featuring selected stories by Keith Giffen, appropriately titled The DC Universe by Keith Giffen.

The Giffen volume will reprint just a small sample of contributions the prolific writer/artist made through the decades, and it is unclear at this time how much Booster Gold will be in it. If the solicitation is accurate, the answer is a little but not much, which also describes how much of our hero will be on the cover reusing Kevin Maguire's art from the "Remembering Keith Giffen" ad that ran in DC Comics in November 2023:

Keep an eye out for that in September.

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Last April, J.M. Dematteis posted to his blog, jmdematteis.com, pictures of the late Keith Giffen's plots for Booster Gold Volume 2, #43, and for some reason, I bookmarked them but never posted about them here at Boosterrific.

I'm correcting that oversight now.

This is page one of the issue, with Giffen's signature thumbnail plotting on the left and finished art (by Chris Batista, Rich Perrotta, Hi-Fi Designs) on the right.

I enjoy Bastista's work (I even own some), but side by side, I definitely prefer the Keith Giffen-drawn comic.

By all means, visit jmdematteis.com to see some more.

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Booster booster J writes in to say:

I'm writing with additional information about the house ad memorial for Keith Giffen. This ad also appears in the issue DC's 'Twas The 'Mite Before Christmas #1.

The ad J is talking about is this one which ran in books released a year ago this week:

J's tips are usually pretty reliable, but as it happens, I have the issue open in font of me right now, and it most definitely does not have the ad in it.

But I'm not calling J a liar.

What I suspect happened, and I am unable to communicate with J directly to confirm this because J never sends a reply address, but what I suspect happened is that J was looking at a digital release of the issue. DC has often had different house ads in digital releases than what they print in their books. I'm sure this is largely because they have to print physical books far in advance of publication, but digital assets can be manipulated up to the moment of release (and often after).

Because I do not trust that digital files have not been manipulated, I resist listing digital-only Booster Gold appearances in the Boosterrific Database, and I'm going to resist it in this case, too.

This is not the first time J has pointed me towards digital assets that the Boosterrific Database willfully ignores. See also: "A Thing I Do Not Know What To Do With," posted on Sept 18, 2023.

Thanks for the notes, J. Keep those corrections coming.

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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 appears in only two panels in Justice League International #20, so we'll skip ahead to Justice League International #21 where Booster Gold has about the greatest three consecutive panel sequence you'll ever read in a DC comic.

And can we just take an extra moment to admire Ty Templeton's pencils on what is very obviously a layout (with an iconic Darkseid closeup) by the late, great Keith Giffen? Amazing work, guys.

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