Arriving tomorrow at your Local Comic Shop (but probably not mine) is, to borrow a phrase from DC Comics' official solicitation text, "THE STARTLING CONCLUSION TO KINGDOM OF ZOD!" I guess it must be pretty good to justify all those capital letters.

The preview of Superman: Kingdom of Zod Special #1 available at AIPTComics.com makes it clear that Booster Gold will make at least a cameo appearance in this one-shot final installment of the two-month storyline, so buy this issue and make Skeets happy.

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My Local Comic Shop is currently having difficulty getting their weekly shipments from Lunar Distribution. This means I can't currently buy or read new DC Comics until days or weeks after their release.

Therefore, I was able to confirm only yesterday that Booster Gold makes no appearance in last week's Superman Unlimited #17. It'll probably be another week before I can get a look at today's Superman #42.

Superman saved literally everyone on planet Earth except Booster Gold in Superman Unlimited #17, so Booster has to be rescued in Superman #42, right? Right?

You'll probably know before I do.

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Part 7 of the "Kingdom of Zod" story arrives at your Local Comic Shop tomorrow in the form of Superman Unlimited #17. Since there's no reason to expect Booster Gold will be in that just as he was not in parts 5 or 6 last week, I'd like to talk about something else today, specifically 2007-2008's Countdown to Final Crisis.

Since this is a Booster Gold blog, I should mention up front that Booster Gold played only the most tangential role in this weekly series follow-up to 52, making only cameo appearances in the 2-page backmatter of issues #43, 42, 41, and 20, while the "Dark" Booster Gold of an alternate Earth (presumably Earth-3) briefly appears in issues #16 and 15 just to get his butt kicked. (If you're confused by that numbering, know that Countdown numbered its issues backwards from #51. "Count Down." Get it?)

But I don't mention Countdown today because of its Booster Gold content (or lack thereof). I mention it because this past weekend I finished reading it for the first time. For financial reasons, I chose to forgo buying most issues when they were new, and after strongly disliking Final Crisis, I never had the interest in going back. A collection I recently acquired had almost all of the outstanding issues, so I finally took the plunge. I have to say, younger me made the correct decision; it's every bit as bad as everyone said it was back in 2008.

From the very start, Countdown is a jumbled, meandering, repetitive and self-contradictory mess, badly hindered by art teams who didn't communicate and editors either unwilling or unable to rein in a series of terrible creative choices and corporate mandates. In its best moments, the story is clearly just marking time; in its worst it's wallowing in torture porn. Reading this as it was coming out must have frustrated more than a few readers away from DC Comics, necessitating the line-wide New 52 Reboot just three years later. In summary: it stinks.

The good news here, and there is good news, is that Countdown has remained unpopular with readers and creatives alike. So far as I can tell, it has been largely ignored and forgotten in the years since its release. With any luck, it remains possible that more recent DC "event" stories with significantly more Booster Gold content could experience a similar fate. Therefore, in a very accidental way, the story of Countdown is a story of hope, and a little hope is never a bad thing.

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Is Booster Gold in today's 4th installment of the "Kingdom of Zod" storyline appearing in Superman #41? Buy it and find out.

(Or wait until after I visit my Local Comic Shop this afternoon/evening and update this post with the definitive answer. Spoilsport.)

UPDATE: Yep, he's in there. Given the ending, no promises about next week, though.

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Last week Booster Gold surprised us a bit by turning up in Action Comics #1101. That issue was the second of nine parts in the "Kingdom of Zod" storyline that continues in this week's Superman Unlimited #16. The issue preview at AIPTComics.com makes it clear this one picks up where that one left off, so we can be pretty confident that Booster will be in this one, too.

UPDATE: He is. Three pages.

And, unless something changes, we might want to start anticipating Booster Gold appearing in some/all of the comics in the "Kingdom of Zod" event:

• Part 1: Supergirl #16 (no Booster Gold)
• Part 2: Action Comics #1101 (yes Booster Gold)
• Part 3: Superman Unlimited #16 (yes Booster Gold)
• Part 4: Superman #41 (August 26, 2026)
• Part 5: Supergirl #17 (September 2026)
• Part 6: Action Comics #1102 (September 2026 with Booster Gold on the cover)
• Part 7: Superman Unlimited #17 (September 2026)
• Part 8: Superman #42 (September 2026)
• Part 9: Superman: Kingdom of Zod Special #1 (September 30, 2026)

Buy at least these issues with Booster Gold in them and make Skeets happy.

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