Superman (2023) #29

I normally don’t really like to formally review books as they come out. Part of that’s because I find it’s usually a good idea to let them sit for awhile and see how it all looks from the other side of it. And sure, sometimes that ends up biting me very hard in the ass1—

—but sometimes, you end up appreciating the overall arc of something much better for some time percolating on it. Or letting tempers cool. Whichever the case may be. I mean, Infinite Crisis was one of those; I was furious about Ted being killed, but despite being very glad to have him back now, I can’t deny that in the long run, that arc starting there and going all the way up to Flashpoint had some of the best writing either he or Booster had gotten in years.

Another part is because I genuinely like drawing attention to older stories that might get overlooked by newer fans, and I’ve found new appreciations for them as I go back over them myself. Sometimes it’s just reaffirming something I loved before, but sometimes it’s also recognizing things I might not have the first — or second, or even third — time around, if not about the text itself, then about my relationship to said text.

That being said, my compatriot Walter (I hope you don’t mind if I call you that, fella, should you read this) over on Boosterrific wrote something a few days ago when this issue that came out which stuck with me. Not so much because the words themselves were anything all that surprising (understandably), but because they resonated with me.

I’m one of those comics fans that takes long breaks from it. New52, for example, disappointed me so damn badly that I was gone for years after. You couldn’t have paid me to read DC in that era, let alone had me pay them to. I only started drifting back post-Rebirth, and even then, pretty casually. (Though I was definitely hyped about Rebirth Wonder Woman, the first twenty-five issues of which remain one of my favorite runs of all time.)

So, you can probably imagine my annoyance when most of the team that I’d loved starting way back 2003, haunting Blue Devil Comics for every back issue I could afford to get my hands on, were still being basically ignored. We had Ted, which was a hell of a nice thing after so many years where he was dead, and we had Guy (and his Red Lantern run was one of the best things to ever come out of New52, I discovered in retrospect), but the rest of the core JLI was basically off the radar. Or maybe still inexplicably evil2.

Without a ton of reasons to read, I remained only casually and peripherally aware of the goings on of the DCU, which is probably how I ended up missing The Gift3, which is how I ended up not missing that other steaming pile referenced above4, but I’m digressing.

Anyway, back to Walter. Beyond the fact he’s the webmaster of the single most comprehensive source of Booster Gold material on the entire internet — no joke, I think the only thing I never saw him mention is the JLA prose novel Exterminators by Christopher Golden, published in 2004, which has Booster as the narrative center of two scenes5 — he’s also entertaining to read himself and a pretty good sport, and he’s gotta be Booster’s most consistently faithful fan.

So, when the expert in the fannish field is distressed by something, it’s very notable. I thought I might examine why and a little about how I’m feeling myself.

Just as a disclaimer, besides that this has spoilers — if you haven’t read it yet — I’m not actually interested in about 90% of this issue. (Sorry, Legion fans.) As anyone who knows me decently well knows, I have my flags planted upon certain hills, and upon those hills I’ll live or die, metaphorically speaking. Whatever else is happening on various hills around mine are a peripheral concern at best.

My Justice League is the JLI, my Green Lantern is Guy Gardner and my favorite regular-human heroes are Blue Beetle (Ted Kord variation) and Booster Gold.

That being said, I had a feeling when I pre-ordered this issue (digitally, because my nearest LCS is now well out of my way) that Booster was going to finally make an appearance again, which was why I did bother to pre-order it. We’ve only seen him a couple of times since he went missing after the All-In Special, but the set-up was pretty clear.

I will say that despite my reading being almost solely for Booster, I did laugh at Superboy Prime’s monologuing. Especially this bit—

—because ‘some lame Batman rip-off’ might be one of the best ways I’ve ever seen The Batman Who Laughs described. I remember having interestingly mixed feelings about Prime being given a redemption arc back then, considering Infinite Crisis, but ultimately feeling that it was well done, too. But as Prime himself says:

Admittedly, I’m not actually a fan of fourth-wall breaking characters most of the time. I get why some people like them, but they really kind of annoy me; when I’m reading a story, it’s to escape into said story. It’s to get absorbed into it and all the interesting facets of it — provided it has those — and so getting taken out of it’s a vague kind of irritating.

That being said, it made for an interesting juxtaposition here; this is set up as being a deathly serious story. An entire (beloved) team of superheroes has been either co-opted or, as we find out later in the issue, murdered in various iterations. The future looks to be in dire shape. So, when Williamson (presumably with the permission of DC Editorial) decided to go off on a Superboy Prime fueled meta commentary, it sort of— I dunno. Put a pin in the metaphorical balloon, I guess?

As to whether you feel like that’s a good thing or a bad thing, that’s up to you to decide. I’m largely neutral on it myself because, like I said, I’m reading this particular issue of this particular book for one single reason, which is Booster.

That makes the first name-check of him particularly interesting, in part because it’s defying everything DC’s done with Booster since his last solo, which ended all the way back in 2011.

I don’t honestly know how to feel about Prime saying Booster’s one of the greatest superheroes of all time. Not because I don’t love Booster — I mean, sheesh, look around this place, how I feel about that guy is pretty self-evident — but because I think what makes Booster such a brilliant character is just how very human and relatable he is. What makes him great to me, as a character, is that he’s flawed and mortal and several shades of Wow This Man is Not Okay™, but he still pulls on his boots and takes beating after beating.

Dan Jurgens maintained from the start that Booster wanted to be a hero, that he was a legitimate hero, but what makes Booster that for me is that he’s just wholly, fundamentally human. He’s extraordinary precisely because he’s ordinary. He screws up sometimes, and missteps, he’s a walking example of all kinds of emotional damage and how that can manifest in some painful ways, but he still chooses to pick himself up and wipe the blood off of his mouth and go back to fighting the genuinely good fight anyway.

For all the guy catches shit because either fans or writers have forgotten just how much he’s already bled on the battlefield since his creation, he’s still gone full villain 100% fewer times than Hal Jordan. For an example. And at the end of the day, Booster hasn’t gotten any fame or fortune he’s gotten to keep, but he still keeps going out there and being a hero anyway.

There’s danger in putting a character like him on a pedestal or under it.

In fairness, that might actually be what young Clark here means, because even if Superboy Prime is a super-powered possible menace now, he was once just a regular human kid who had to live a human life, one where it didn’t take a red sun to make him bleed. He, too, knows what it’s like to wipe the blood off of his mouth and stand back up. I could see where he might harbor a liking for another flawed mortal.

Problem is— I wish I could honestly say I was giving DC credit for being that deep, but after years of how they’ve written Booster (and Ted, and Max, and Bea, and—), I have a suspicion that Prime is more referring to the Time Master stuff, which I always had a very mixed relationship with anyway.

I don’t tend to get my hopes up because I just don’t have a whole lot of faith in most of DC’s current crop of writers to think that deeply about it. I started from the All-In Special feeling like they were jettisoning a few important things, from just how long Booster was in the League (a decade!), to Superman’s very notable beef with Booster—

—which seems entirely unnecessary?

Listen, listen. If you’re going to have Superman decide he likes Booster, you cannot — cannot — just ignore the fact that for most of Booster’s existence, he really didn’t. Clark’s incredibly selective memory of— pretty much their entire relationship through the late 80s and most of the 90s slapped me out of the story so hard that I face-faulted6. It would have been a hell of a lot more realistic and less ridiculous to say Superman softened up after Booster proved himself. Which— he did. Repeatedly.

It feels a little like trying to take a narrative shortcut that’s unearned when a single line could have been rewritten to keep it in line with what we all know happened. Another thing that threw me was any speculation on his part about going back to his own time; even if we assume his Ma’s alive again, re: Action Comics, he didn’t exactly have much there beyond her and maybe his sister. I can’t imagine a night watchman’s job at the Space Museum was callin’ to him here, y’know?

That, too, felt like a weak narrative shortcut. Just recently in Blue Beetle (2023), it’s shown that Booster and the JLI still consider themselves a team, one who will come back together when something bad happens, so it’s not like he doesn’t have reasons to stay and people who care about him to stay for. If not the whole JLI, then absolutely Ted Kord still does, but I’m inclined to hope the whole team would by now.

However, despite these annoyances, I tried to be forgiving because I kind of desperately wanted DC to treat Booster like he was a serious character again after years of character assassination by King and those who followed King. Because anyone who’s really paid attention to Booster knows he spends the majority of his existence as a more serious character; even when the humor happens — because it does! — it’s nearly always a product of the situation or the fact that the man’s human, not because he’s somehow actually just a (badly written) joke himself.

So, I went into this all feeling at least decently optimistic that maybe Booster was going to get treated like he was something more than a moron — which he’d never been during those times he’s best remembered for — and maybe, just maybe, he’d get a chance to win for once. Not even win big, just— gain a triumph, maybe. Hell, even a small triumph.

Or even just maybe a moment’s kindness.

Not to spend basically every minute tied in some fashion to the DC Universe’s emotional whipping post. Again.

You know what they say. Be careful what you wish for.

After getting lost into the future and forgotten about by everyone, the next time we see the poor guy, he’s hanging on a wall in the Summer of Superman Special. I was absolutely thrilled to see his monologue-box styling again, because I missed the hell out of him, and again, it was nice seeing him being treated a hell of a lot more like he had been pre-Flashpoint: As a serious character with some kind of narrative weight behind him.

Admittedly, I was a little concerned because our boy was once again tied up, but not even in any particularly fun ways this time.7

The problem I’m running into here is about the same one that Walter seems to be running into: This isn’t exactly looking like a step up. Or a step anywhere, really.

Like— what are we (meaning fans of Booster) supposed to be reading for?

I’ve got to allow for the fact that I haven’t seen it all play out, but just in the past little while, as in the past day, I’ve already heard that the new initiative — DC K.O. — is supposed to be in line with Metal and Death Metal (which I already admittedly knew), and that it’s going to cater to power scalers (which oh my god), and that mostly it’s gonna focus on who can be the nastiest in the pursuit of power ✨for the greater good✨ and that this shit is going to go on until 2027. That this whole K.O. business is only the middle of this arc.

—what am I supposed to be looking forward to, here? And for how long?

Beyond the fact that no one at DC Editorial has apparently bothered to really consider how much they want to use the word omega8 in a world where Archive of Our Own (AO3) is the #1 website in the world for Books & Literature and the #130 website in the world over all910, all of this just sounds like the most straight white dude bait that I’ve ever heard.

Before anyone decides to get all up in arms for me saying that— no, you know, I’m not gonna disclaim it by saying, but not all straight white dudes. Yes, I know. So does everyone else. If you’re not offended by this, then clearly I’m not talking to you. If you are offended by it, tough shit.

I’m a queer woman. I’m very used to living in a world that caters to straight white dudes and, because I’m living in that world, I get to navigate life where most media and entertainment either outright gives them what they want or at least apologizes anytime they deviate from the script and throw the rest of us a bone. Especially in comics. Over on Reddit, /u/MatrixKent posted Women in DC in September 2025 recently, and every single time one of these lists comes out, it drives home exactly what the state of affairs are in that regard.

Anyway, though, I’m digressing again. Back to the issue.

Or, rather, back to my issues with the issue.

As I had been saying, I was sort of desperately hoping DC was going to course-correct and give Booster back some of his narrative weight. Which they might have done, but only to possibly go too far the other way.

More selfishly, though, I was also hoping they’d give the man a break. All-In looked like it was trying to go in that direction, insofar as it was letting Booster be a more street-level hero again — which people forget he spent most of his existence as! — and finally doing away with the whole ‘he has to get emotionally abused by the entire DCU for the sake of the time stream’ bullshit that made for great angst, but an increasingly distressing read back towards the end of his 2007 run.

I’ve got a lot of opinions about how DC keeps missing the boat on several characters by latching onto the wrong things with them. But it feels like that’s the direction they’re going in again.

The thing is— he was actually perfectly in-character in Superman #29.

As heartbreaking as it is, that’s actually very much what the man would think, particularly after spending years without rescue. A whole lot of Booster’s bravado has always been some form of shield; it’s part of what makes him so interesting to read about. At his most earnest and sincere, he’s a pretty normal, if damaged, guy who isn’t particularly altruistic in the most straight-forward ways (ie, being a hero, but tying that to his self-worth and to making a living, which is an entire psychological discussion better saved for other days and issues11) but who is, at heart, still genuinely good. Because you don’t bleed and suffer the way he has, putting your life on the line for others, if you aren’t.

Beyond that, though, if he thought the people who did claim to care about him just abandoned him, that would do one hell of a number on him psychologically.

And see, he doesn’t stop being in character, either:

It’s also 100% a Booster thing to do to be unable to stay on the sidelines regardless of risk, and to put his life on the line trying to help people. Because he did for years as a member of the Justice League, and during a period of time where it wasn’t really gaining him anything except eventually a wrecked suit, a missing arm and a year trapped in armor for life support. Hell, even after being turned into an actual zombie, when told he was going to kick it permanently if they took out the Overmaster’s equipment, his answer was:

So, ultimately, my feelings about this issue aren’t really about Booster’s characterization. Because whatever else, I think both of those things — his wrenchingly sad belief that he didn’t matter enough to rescue and his frank courage in trying to fight on the side of good — are perfectly in keeping with said characterization. Certainly it’s more in character than most other stuff from this era.

Where I think I’m more in concurrence with Walter is, again, back to the question of— what is there to look forward to from here?

I’m not a power scaler. I’m not even that big into cosmic-sized stories, which is probably why I didn’t love the whole Time Masters stuff, though I did love that book regardless. I don’t actually care how many people get slaughtered only to be resurrected later, yet again, for what— the third time now?

What I am into is character-pieces. Human stories. Even when a story is about the plot, even when it’s got great fight scenes and cosmic implications, I’d rather read about what in it still resonates with a human heart. Regardless of who the main character is, though this particular main character is a big favorite for those, if only because he really isn’t larger than life. Just— a very well-rendered example of it.

And everything it seems Snyder, Williamson and DC are setting up points to this being something geared to the exact opposite of that.

I had maintained some optimism. Back in January, while I was trying to hold onto that in the face of months of Booster being MIA, Walter said, “Your continued optimism is appreciated, Steff.”

Man, fella, I wish I could say I had more to cling to, but— I don’t think I really do. I think you called this one.

There’s really only so much I want to read about the Next Big Crisis Or Whatever. And I sometimes feel that them using a character poorly is worse than them not using a character at all. I certainly could have done without several choices they’ve made with Booster (and the whole JLI) over the past fourteen years, truthfully.

It may well be that this is something I look back on like I did Infinite Crisis: As something best appreciated on the other side, with some time to let it percolate or for tempers to cool. That it actually leads into something great. I don’t think it will, but I have to always allow I might be wrong; in fact, whatever else, I genuinely want to be proven so.

But I’m done getting my hopes up, I think. If they want my money again, they’ll just have to go back to earning it.

In the meantime, stick around if you want to read more of my reviews on much older books, or maybe whatever other giant labor of love dissertations/essays/what-have-you come to mind.

Thanks for reading.