Honestly, I'd forgotten Empire was ever released by DC.

Now, I'm not particularly surprised that I missed that ad. I was no longer working in a comic shop by July 2003 so I wasn't reading every comic that hit the stands. I wouldn't think to start Boosterrific.com until 2006, and I didn't even begin indexing house advertisements until 2010.

I tell you this not to make excuses but as an admission that I'm fallible. (Just ask J, who has been on a tear lately editing many grammatical errors on this site, some of which have existed for decades.) As complete as I have tried to make Boosterrific.com, there may be — and likely are — many other Booster Gold appearances out that I have overlooked.

So if you happen to spot Booster somewhere unexpected, please don't be shy about bringing it to my attention. I'd rather be told about the same appearance over and over again than miss one.

Thanks in advance, Booster boosters.

I don't know which page I would have picked as a favorite from Justice League America Annual #7 when I first read it in 1993.

I like the Hitchcockian horror-influenced sequences of Booster Gold's talking head running through pages 5, 6, 7, and 9, but none of those pages quite come together as a whole for me. Gene D'Angelo's garish colors combine with Greg LaRocque's loose layouts to create an almost hallucinogenic environment which bothers me more the longer I look at them.

So instead I think I'll choose page 16, where a powerless, line-swinging Fire saves the JLA's resident idiot, Guy Gardner, on the world's largest jungle gym:

I cannot deny it: I enjoy cheesecake "Good Girl" images of Fire. But I also think this example of lurid, sexually suggestive posing works particularly well, thematically, in this dark horror story in which the alien parasites use lust to manipulate their prey, like a page from Dracula, and the protagonist's runaway id creates monsters, like scenes from Forbidden Planet. Cheesecake images here can inspire similar feelings in the viewer, deepening a connection with the story.

(Unfortunately, this particular issue meanders too much to really take advantage of such atmosphere. Too many subplots, too many pages to fill, too many inkers. But still. It's nice to know that Greg LaRocque was trying.)

Horror and sex, working together since man first discovered Fire.

Now, I haven't yet seen the panels from JLU #18, but the Superman panel in question is included in the issue preview at BleedingCool.com, but the important part is this:

Hmm. That looks familiar. Where have I seen that before? Ah, yes, Batman/Superman: World's Finest #20, also drawn by Dan Mora.

I hope this means Mora will be sneaking Booster into the background of more comics. Keep your eyes peeled, Booster boosters!

Thanks, Rob and Tony.

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.

Booster Gold plays only bit parts in Justice League America #77 and #78, and is absent from #79 entirely.

So let's skip ahead to Justice League America #80, where the Corporate Crusader is finally back in super-powered action... in arguably the ugliest costume he'll ever wear.

Yes, that ridiculous suit is bulky and ugly, and it makes Booster look considerably less-than-heroic, which was writer Dan Vado's intention as he started Booster's long journey back from Doomsday's destruction of his original power suit. Sometimes to get to the top, you have to start at the bottom.