If you've not been paying any attention to Absolute Power (mild spoilers ahead), we learned in May's Absolute Power FCBD Special Edition #1 that a former Justice Leaguer has pulled a Benedict Arnold and turned against his former friends. That ally (and this is the spoilery bit) is Green Arrow, and we learn in last week's Absolute Power #1 that (even more spoilery) he joined Amanda Waller's new world dictatorship willingly.

The betrayal here is pretty severe, as Green Arrow was the first non-founding Justice Leaguer to join the team, signing up "for life" in Justice League of America #4 (May 1961). It's hard to imagine that such a longstanding hero won't eventually turn out to be a double agent, working against Waller from the inside. Which is why when I read Green Lantern reading Batman the riot act in Absolute Power #1 last week, I immediately thought of Booster Gold, specifically Booster Gold in 1987's Millennium #7:

Hmm. That broody guy in the green hood casting aspersions about Booster sure looks familiar. Maybe it's the mustache.

It took a few months for the dust to settle around Booster, but eventually it did. I'm sure one day everyone will forget about Arrow's betrayal, too.

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DC's 1988 event Millennium is not widely beloved for a variety of reasons — foremost among them for all Booster boosters is that it got Booster Gold cancelled. But what sealed its fate is that it doesn't stick the landing.

The concluding issue, Millennium #8, is 24 pages of just talking and new character introductions. It doesn't feel as much like a denouement for what came before as it does the first issue in a brand new comic book populated by a bunch of badly stereotyped characters with poorly thought-out powers. Blech.

Booster appears in several panels in this turkey, and he's featured equally as prominently as Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman. Which is to say that they are all extras in the story of future household names Gloss, RAM, Extrano, Jet, Floro, and... Betty.

As it happens, I do have a favorite page in this issue. It's page 5, in which Booster Gold learns that everything he's gone through in the previous seven weeks — losing his fortune, his friends, and his good name — was leading to the creation of a superhuman with the power to arrange furniture for maximum harmony!

I have to believe that when Gloss says "You'll never regret this," she's being sarcastic.

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Somehow, Booster Gold doesn't appear anywhere in Millennium #2, but Millennium #3 makes up for that by dedicating several pages to our hero.

Of those, my favorite is this one, page 11, written by Steve Englehart and drawn by Joe Staton:

Somehow, Steve Englehart's characterizations of the JLI here feel much more "correct" than Len Wein's JLA we saw last week in Blue Beetle #20. Both writers had worked on Justice League comics before, in the early (Wein) and late (Englehart) 70s. It's probably worth noting that according to Englehart's own website, steveenglehart.com, he was brought on to the book in 1977 to "give the characters personalities." That tradition clearly continued into Giffen/DeMatteis's International era, where personalities were often more important than plots.

And while I'm talking Englehart, I should probably also add that although he didn't introduce the "Manhunter" characters — that credit technically belongs to Joe Simon and Jack Kirby — Englehart did introduce the concept of the Manhunters as Oan robot constructs in Justice League of America #140. So there's a direct line from Englehart's 1970s JLA to Millennium a decade later.

That concludes your comics history lesson for this week, kids. Your assignment: read more comics!

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The third Booster Gold comic released on September 15, 1987 was Justice League International #9, which contained events explicitly taking place immediately after Millennium #1 (also released on September 15).

As it happens, for several reasons, not the least of which was limited funding, I didn't buy every Justice League International comic the week it was released. But it happens that I did buy this one because it tied into Millennium #1. (So I'm living proof that major crossover events sell books, I guess.)

I mention that because at the time, page 3 was my favorite page simply for the reason that I always thought it was cool that Blue Beetle was able to put out a cry for help with his breath on a window.

But my tastes have changed. These days, I have a different favorite page... for two specific reasons. One of those reasons will be immediately self-evident to all Booster boosters who lay eyes on it:

See? Booster Gold is just the coolest. (Golly, I love those panels 3-6 of reaction shots zooming in closer and closer to the eyes before the big reveal that it was Booster Gold who saved the day.... just in time for Blue Beetle to bring our arrogant hero back down to Earth! What a wonderful sequence.)

The second — and considerably nerdier — reason I love this page is how wrong it is.

What you see above is the page as it appeared in more modern reprints on higher quality paper. You can see that the re-colorist (presumably using the original color master?) maintained the coloring mistakes that the late, great Gene D'Angelo unintentionally made in the original newsprint publication, such as Booster's flesh-colored star and Martian Manhunter wearing Booster's pants.

When the same issue was republished just a few years ago in Justice League International: Born Again, the page coloring was corrected, but washing out the existing color from scans of the original resulted in thinner blacks. The overall effect is a page that actually looks worse despite the "correction." (Leave D'Angelo's work alone!)

And both of those reprints have eliminated one of my favorite details: the page number! In the original publication, this is clearly marked "14" in the lower left corner. Why did it go away when other pages have maintained their in-art numbering?

(Side note: As a chronicler, I love page numbers! Please, please, please, bring back page numbers, DC!)

All of these little idiosyncrasies plus a badass Booster Gold moment add up to make page 14 (numbered or not) my favorite page of the issue.

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Last week's featured book, Booster Gold #23, was just one of three comics with significant Booster Gold content released on September 15, 1987.

The second is Millennium #1, the first entry in a months-long event that would span the entire DC Universe. If you are familiar with Millennium, you are probably aware that it is... not especially beloved, largely because of the editorial mandate that each series being published had to tie-in, often in the most ham-fisted ways possible.

Especially in relation to Booster Gold.

But that's not the topic at hand. Even misguided comics can have fun pages. A highlight of events like these is always seeing all the heroes milling around as though they were regular partygoers at a costume party, like this crowd scene from page 14.

It's actually kind of difficult to make these overcrowded group shots work as anything other than a class photo, but here artist Joe Staton and letterer Bob Lappan manage to give the scene some life as the dialog trickles back and forth down the page. Each snippet of conversation gives the impression that we're eavesdropping on natural dialog just as the camera comes to focus on the talker (or thinker, as the case may be).

Most importantly, Booster boosters are guaranteed to enjoy a callback to the running joke of people calling our hero "Buster." It's a classic!

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