JLI Podcast – Meanwhile… in JLMay: Brave & the Bold #23 with Booster Gold and Magog

Joining the 2023 JLMay podcast crossover event, John Koos and The Irredeemable Shag discuss THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD #23 (2009) starring Booster Gold & Magog! Plus YOUR listener feedback!

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38 responses to “JLI Podcast – Meanwhile… in JLMay: Brave & the Bold #23 with Booster Gold and Magog

  1. “Congratulations dismembered arm.”
    Words I never thought I would hear in that order.

    Great discussion. I’m not a big Booster Gold fan but this sounds like an issue that showcases why I should be.

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  2. As another Booster booster, I co-sign Shagg’s statement that he’s the most successful post-Crisis creation. Which first, my tummy hurts for agreeing with Shagg, and second, Booster Gold #1 was published between issue 11 and 12 of CoIE, making it decidedly the first new series starting in post-Crisis continuity, but still came out before Crisis was finished! Now my head hurts too.

    I really need to get to Booster’s second series. I’ve read a couple of issues, but it came out during one of my “reduction” periods for buying new comics, so it slipped by me. It *is* on my “to read” list in DC Universe Infinite Ultra which is totally not a ridiculously long name, so I’ll get to it. Eventually. That “to read” list seems to grow all the time. Anybody else have that problem?

    Huh, I haven’t written anything about Magog. … Huh.

    Now to Mr Koos, excellent job as always. As an official representative of the Wright On Network, we appreciate your enthusiasm regarding issue #7, and wish there had been positions available at that time. However, our episode featured AJ, Laurel, and Diane-our-JSA-historian, so I hope you enjoyed their coverage. And also, I wouldn’t suggest trying to bump any of them off an episode. Really, you don’t want to get on Laurel’s bad side. *shudder*

    Thank you both for another fun podcast!

  3. Haven’t listened yet. Reading ahead on comments.

    Hmm…I like you Fire & Water guys a lot, but Tim’s network has girls — like, more than one! (Like Smurfette, Stella cannot represent her gender all by herself, and should not be called upon to do so.)

    Shag, girls!

    (I mean women, of course, but I’m going for a certain twelve-year-old sense of wonder and mysterious, awakening interest here that I believe is familiar to almost everyone on this network.)

    1. Alas, I cannot take credit for the diversity at WON. It’s all thanks for founder and visionary, AJ. In fact, I’m still not sure how I ended up being part of that great group. And my show lost the great Sara Century, so I’m down a girl-ahem-woman. Sigh.

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    2. Dear Captain Entropy,

      Are you really trying to risk the ire of the other female contributors to the Fire & Water Podcast Network by ignoring their contributions: Cindy Franklin, Elyse, Isabel, Nathalie, Josée, Shotgun, and Amelie? As a Network, we highly recommend against this current path you are following. It leads only to pain and misery for yourself.

      1. Well, let me start by apologizing. I’m very sorry, and I don’t mean to slight the performers or their work, which I have enjoyed and even sung the praises of on these very pages. They’re obviously women, and obviously contributors to the Fire & Water Network. My problem is how I think of them. In my head, Cindy and Chris are an indivisible unit, like Starhawk from the original Guardians of the Galaxy. Even when one does a podcast without the other, you can often hear the one who isn’t doing the podcast in the background. Similarly, the Hot Squad appears either as a unit with Siskoid (like Doc Magnus and his Metal Men), or as individual guests on other podcasts. But in their role as Fire & Water regulars, they’re not a woman. They’re women. I know these conglomerations and categorizations don’t make sense. We’re talking about flesh and blood people who have lives and even online followings of their own. But that’s how it fell out in my head. I was wrong. Again, please forgive me.

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  4. Mark Waid did do the Gog New Year’s Evil one-shot in 1998. More recently, there is a Magog connection in an arc of Waid’s excellent World’s Finest story – to say any more would be very spoilerly.

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  5. Gog and Magog are from the book of Revelatons they lead a war on the christen nations. in Kingdom come he leads the new Heroes vs the old. It’s not subitle. He’s wearing a devil/loki/magneto helmet.
    In KC he’s just a counterpoint to Superman,BLOWS up Kansas, weeps and gives up. He’s just there to make a point. I am not a fan of Kingdom come at ALL. But I cant blame anybody who asked “ok he;s as powerful superman he KILLED THE joker and made Superman go weep for 10. OK WHERE’S HE FROM?!

  6. I believe that last appearance of Power Girl’s cat is actually its brief appearance in Wonder Woman #600, which came out slightly after its last appearance in the Power Girl series.

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    1. I really should have caught that as I chastised John for missing it out of this mention of Power Trip! Stinky also appears really briefly in Power Girl #13, though Wonder Woman edges it out by about a week (PG #13 was the 23rd June and WW #600 30th June).

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  7. Wow, I don’t remember this story at all, I guess I must have missed it. It’s almost surprising because I’ve been a big Booster fan from the beginning. The promo material and house ads. I think I first saw him in the two colour Direct Currents. I still have the promo button that was given away for the book’s launch. I even had my name mentioned in the letter column at some point

    But getting back to this story, as gory as the scene where the hostage taker had his arm ripped off, I’m surprised Booster didn’t have a stronger reaction. After all, he personally knows what it’s like to have his own arm torn off by the Overmaster during the Judgement Day event.

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  8. Shag and John — great coverage of an issue that, umm…had great art and at least one, possibly two great characters (I’m on the fence about Rip). I was following this era’s Booster Gold series right before a move separated me from my family for a while and turned life upside down. I remember enjoying the ones I read, especially issues 5 and 1,000,000. That 1,000,000 issue can still get me emotional, because I have felt about some people the way Batman felt about Booster. “From now on, I don’t care what anyone says. I have seen who you really are, and I am ON. YOUR. SIDE.” So anyway, Magog silliness notwithstanding, great work helping me find my joy, men!

  9. Oh hey, I thought an issue about Booster Gold and that other guy, this should totally mean I can get away without mentioning Pee Gee, oh wait John Koos is co-hosting … 😀 I don’t think I heard anyone else’s name thrown about in a podcast that wasn’t a host or character, than mine in this one, and I appreciate John taking a bullet (or Magog) for me on this one!

    Not sure I can add much to the Magog debate as said he’s a pastiche of 90s Superheroes that somehow because just the type of hero he was taking the mickey of! At least if you were going to take a character from Kingdom Come it has to be Power Woman right?

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      1. I’ll ask as I don’t much about power girl .why is she so awesome ? I ask because super girl is one of my bros favorites. And aside from the JSA books I’ve read I don’t really know anything about her as a character.

    1. ‘I don’t think I heard anyone else’s name thrown about in a podcast that wasn’t a host or character…’

      >cough<

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  10. When you guys were talking a bit of how Power Girl’s origin story was altered Post Crisis, I thought about another character who’s origin was messed around with too, Donna Troy. Wouldn’t it be fun to have a book where these two meet up and assume the other’s old origin story was the actual one?

    Actually they aren’t the only characters who were really messed up Post Crisis, Hawkman and Hawkgirl/Hawkwoman got pretty confusing too for awhile.

    1. My friend in middle school did the same thing. His entire jacket was made up of Marvel and DC pins and he was the only one out of our little group that collected Booster Gold. That pin had a lot of power I guess.

  11. Impressive podcast most impressive. Cool team up of Boster and Magog. Maygog? What ever his name is. The team up was ok. Cool seeing Boster back. Sadly not with Harlequin since I ship that from that issue way back when when she found herself in love with Boster. Yeah I know I’m in the minority in this one. But hey it’s a ship. Why not go for the long shot.

    Moving on. Not sure if ripping the guys arm off would work. With the dead man’s switch activated. Wouldn’t the cord being broke count as letting go of the switch and boom?
    Since the connection to the bomb is disconnected to the bomb? The hand is still to the switch but the cord is broken. No idea. I some explosives like nitro, grenades , napalm and Thermite .

    ◦ But, this type is not one I know that much about. Just with a cord disconnect after the button is held wouldn’t that count? Not sure. Anyway cool story. Wow Rip is kind of a jerk to his Dad Boster. Geez. I wonder if Harley is his mom? Any way. Still them doing the Quantum Leap thing is kind of cool. Sadly I hadn’t picked up this comic yet.

    Ah well. Moving right along. Hold up. Boster is great, but I think he’s not the only hero created after Crissis well created in Crisis, but John Consatine kind of counts. Not really as a hero. But he is close enough. He’s done well enough. Boster is better, but still. He had a tv show. He was in some cartoon movies. Was part of the L. O. T. Tv show. And apered In Green Arrow.

    He had a movie not a good one but still.

    ◦ Moving on; May gog, May grog? What ever his name. I can see why DC thought he had legs. After all when Giffen brought back Lobo in JLI. He was a joke in 90s extreme hero. That became a popular extreme hero. But still into comedy. So maybe they ware trying since it sometimes it works. It just doesn’t this time.
    But, also DC tried this with a lot of Kingdom Come characters. Super Man with the black S Shield is every ware. Even on the flash tv show. Fire Stars daughter was in a lot of places. Two versions of her. A lot of them appeared in JSA. Like the new Thunder. Shazam using the Thunder trick. WW and Supes dating.

    Bats and Talia having a kid. Well that one came from an earlier story but still. That and Watch Men get mined more than a energon facility on Cybertron. It’s just on of those stories. While Generations by Byrne mostly gets only mimed for Bats dating WW. As much as I like that story. It just didn’t get as used as much.

    Hmm I just thought of it. If Booster and Harley
    are Rip Hunters parents. And even if it breaks my ship. Sigh I can wonder if Boster and Harley get a divorce. It just doesn’t work out. Harley goes back to Poison Ivy and they raze Rip. And they’re his parents but only limited emo connections with Booster. So he can be a jerk to Booster in the comics. Or he told him to act this way.

    So Booster can be the hero they need. Cool podcast can’t wait for the next episode.

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  12. Well done gentlemen! While the issue may not have been spectacular, you guys certainly were!

    I think I missed getting this issue on purpose when it came out as I think I was of the same mind as Shag; Magog worked for Kingdom Come, but there was no reason to bring him back for any reason. He was a product of the story who didn’t merit any kind of back story or continuing adventures. I think if you wanted a more grim and dark hero to team up with Booster, it would have been great to see Lobo. He has connections to early JLI stories and he also has that humour that, I feel, sets him apart from the other “anti-heroes”. Having said my piece on that, I just want to say you guys made this issue enjoyable by hearing your reactions and opinions on the issue. Also, John’s dulcet tones are music to the ears!

    Ahhh, the JLA 80 Page Giant! How could I forget that, as I just managed to get my hands on that recently and loved the mouse story.

    Wait, we’re allowed to come back on the network?! I thought my episode was a court-mandated, community service gig! In the immortal words of Dr.Zoidberg, “I’m up for whatever.”

    This was lots of fun and it’s great to hear the end is in sight (for the sake of Shag’s sanity) but not too close in sight(for the sake of us listeners who’ve been enjoying the show)! Keep up the great work!

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  13. Wonder full episode and great guest as normal .
    Also quick question did Dc comics did a suger in spike comic in 2016 ? And has any one read it ?
    Im not a huge booster gold fan but I a Dc showcase of his comics I’ll have to reread it. When I’ve finished the other books I’m reading . Have a great month . And remember Justice is team sport .

    1. DC had a six-issue Sugar & Spike as adult detectives strip, by Keith Giffen and Bilquis Evely, in their underrated Legends of Tomorrow anthology in 2016. The strips were reprinted in the 2017 collection Sugar & Spike: Metahuman Investigations collection. You can find reviews of the individual issues at my blog, Too Dangerous For a Girl – better still, the issues are on DC Infinite Ultra Soopah Doopah Yay!

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      1. Thank sir Martian of gray .
        I humbly bow before the true expert and thanks for the info . On the sugar and spike series I’ll have check it out when have some free time .

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  14. Irish Embassy calling. Always good to experience JL:May and good to have a tangential JLI presence in there with Booster.

    It was interesting to hear both John commenting on the Booster Gold issues that he enjoyed (5 and 1,000,000) and then hearing Shagg discuss what he is going to cover post-Breakdowns in the JLI podcast as I feel the Booster Gold issues between 5 and the 1,000,000 issue would be a good one to discuss as it involves the return of the Blue and the Gold and indeed the return of the JLI (relax Shagg, it is only 6-7 issues, not 999,995 issues!). While you may not want to cover those as they are not Giffen/deMatteis, there was a later run of Booster Gold where they took over the writing and had Booster going back to the old JLI time period. There was some very fun bits to that storyline and had a very emotional finale with Booster coming back to the future and mourning Ted’s demise (storyline was pre New 52/Rebirth and the return of Ted). And hey, if you need someone to cover that with you, I’m still awaiting my call to come back on the show (hey, if John can come back, I can dream can’t I? 😉 )

    Magog is an interesting character. I remember his introduction in John’s post-52 Justice Society and his move into the JSA All-Stars. I think he works better as part of a team, sort of a roided-up Guy Gardner type, rather than as the lead of his own series. I glanced at his 12 issue series recently and can’t remember thinking much of it, except for it crossing over into Justice Society and JSA All Starts a few times. Magog was obviously considered to be a big deal though by DC, as they had Giffen writing it with Howard Porter providing art, and they got Scott Kollins to finish the series, all good creators.

    I’m surprised no one mentioned that Magog’s demise has a JLI association – it happened in the Brightest Day era “Justice League: Generation Lost” maxi-series. The resurrected Maxwell Lord had put the mind whammy on Magog to take out the Generation Lost League but after a fight with Captain Atom, Atom managed to get Magog to remember who Max was. However Max then turned up to blow up Magog which achieved two things: (1) His mind control made people think Atom killed Magog, thus further damaging the JL:GL (no, not that one “praise be his name”) team and (2) fulfilling the White Ring’s request to “stop the war” i.e. stopping the future of Kingdom Come happening. (the White Ring has issued a number of requests to all of the resurrected heroes from Blackest Night).

    As for the Brave and the Bold story itself, it was a good one and done story. Interesting to see the contrast between Booster and Magog and wonder if they were trying to put the two on a collision course (although it never came up in any of their series). Art was excellent as always by Jurgens and Rapmund.

    Looking forward to jumping in to Breakdowns next time out.

  15. Scottish Embassy here. Cheers for another top show, it was nice to hear from John again – doesn’t he call himself The World’s Number One Magog Fan (or is that The World’s One Magog Fan)?

    That was a good discussion of an… issue of Brave and Bold. Very fair. I find it really weird that DC was pushing Magog so hard, he wasn’t popular with readers so far as I could see. May as well have called him Captain Fetch

    Symbol Pending is spot on, Power Girl’s cat had no name back then, Jimmy Palmiotti asked for suggestions of DC Message Board readers when he was co-writing Peege’s ongoing. Some genius came up with Stinky as a nod towards Streaky….

    Thank you for the surprise namecheck, Shag. Glad to be of some small service.

    I loved the very smart speculation about whether this was originally Booster Gold 20… maybe you are right, and the story originally meant for this issue didn’t happen, so DC slotted in the Booster and Magog story, and Keith Giffen, being one of the fastest creators in comics, was able to slip into the Booster slot.

    Shagg, Gnort’s rhymes with Sports… Gnort’s Illustrated, geddit? It took me a while, too.

  16. Have you guys not been reading Mark Waid’s World’s Finest series? I won’t say why I ask to avoid spoilers, but if have kept up with you’d know.

  17. Hey Shag, It’s G’Nort’s Swimsuit in the DC universe because in our world it’s Sport’s (rhymes with G’Nort) Illustrated Swimsuit issue. Enjoyed the Meanwhile and look forward to continuing on to the next chapters of Breakdowns.

  18. I am happy to find out that everyone else here hates Magog. Hopefully he is Magone forever because he was Magawful. Magoaway you Magoof. (I have a million of these)

    I wonder if Jurgens was being a little subversive in this issue, because I found Magog leaning into every terrible 90s EXTREME! stereotype so hard, that it almost felt like it was on purpose. Juxtaposing this trope that was so popular in comics, but now feels so dated and tired, against his own creation (Booster Gold), who may have seemed old-fashioned in the 90s, but has had staying power beyond characters like Magog, just feels like some kind of statement by Jurgens that I haven’t fully fleshed out yet to articulate any better than this.

    But the issue did give us a great discussion about team-up books, which were the first comics I ever collected (MTU by JMD), and the legendary Brave and the Bold cartoon. I’ll never turn down a chance to revisit that show, and if it hasnt already happened, someone on F&W should do a pod about it.

  19. Count me in as another huge Booster fan. I first read about him in JLI but I found most of his 80s series at a flea market in the early 1990s and loved it. Those first 1-12 issues are great and I still have them.

    Count me in as another person who thinks Magog is a tool and didn’t see the point of bringing him into the main DCU. But at this point in JSA they were doing lots of Alex Ross covers and bringing in other KC characters and costumes like Starman, Sandman, Tomcat, Cyclone. Even KC Superman was on the team for a while.

    The JSA also went nuts with legacy characters and something you guys didn’t mention is that Magog started out as a legacy character…of FDR! That’s right, the JSA recruited him because he was a descendant of FDR (!) who happened to have an alien laser gun thing grafted to his arm, was a Marine Lance Corporal who joins the JSA under the codename…Lance. He’s around like that for a while before he meets Gog and gets transformed. But yeah, the FDR connection is what got him onto the team. Bizarre.

    You guys were wondering why our guy Magog ran around with a goat helmet on. The answer is, that’s how Gog dressed him when he transformed the tool into Magog. Gog himself rocked the goat head look himself iirc and he basically remade Lance in his own image.

    1. “You guys were wondering why our guy Magog ran around with a goat helmet on. The answer is, that’s how Gog dressed him when he transformed the tool into Magog. Gog himself rocked the goat head look himself iirc and he basically remade Lance in his own image.”

      While that is true, the outside the comic universe explanation is that he is literally the “false idol” from the Book of Exodus. He is the Golden Calf that the Jews (public) create to worship while waiting for Moses (Superman) to return from Mount Sinai (Fortress of Solitude).

      Why did a Heathen have to point this out? 😉

  20. Apologies not heard this in on sitting or even a run yet due to LEGO Shows to run and job interviews to fail.

    I’ll catch up this week.

  21. Holy Moly! I used my Sunday name there to post before – which I guess it’s okay because it’s a Sunday, but wow way to blow my secret identity.

    I released today I’m actually a Fanboy of this show and that is incredibly daft to be a fanboy of a show about a comic series you are fan of and if I was a fan of the in comic General Glory comic I’d be a … hang on the 4th wall dimensional maths is confusing me.

    Anyway back to this issue of Brave and the Bold and JLMa gog-gog gog-gog… The best part of this episode was that for over half the time John Koos (who I must ask to teach me the ways of DCUO having played the beta played for about 18 months and then fell apart and have no idea what I’m doing in the game these days) did his very very best NOT to talk about the issue at hand. Yet the rules of the Podcast and JLMay are one MUST talk about the issue and thankfully for an issue which I don’t recall reading the first time round (but I’ll need to see if I actually bought it) both John and Shag managed to make this issue sound fun! Yay… I said sound fun because honestly I can’t recall a time I looked forward to reading anything the Magog in it. That this could have been an issue of Booster Gold and dragged into the B&B sounds not only plausible but also how it should have been.

    I’ve never liked Magog or Gog in comic book form, I admit I like the movie of GoG but like all comic book adaptations it seemed way different from the source material. Sorry I meant GotG – the T does a LOT of work there. I too felt he was Mark Waid and Alex Ross’ version of Cable in the DCU and how that would be a TERRIBLE thing. Yet Geoff Johns just has to tinker and show off how clever he is to bring back characters others want buried 3 miles under the sea bed of the coast of Jersey – just to be sure. Maybe the wrong lessons were learned from the 80s and 90s Image when Tom King and Geoff Johns seem to really like darkening things for the sake of it.

    At least when Dan Jurgens (who perhaps should get a nomenclature for his Art in the way that George Freaking Perez, Jerry The Extraordinary Ordway and José Luis García-López Praise be his name) gets his chance to do Brave and the Bold – and for some reason I always consider Jurgens to be the logical follow on from Jim Aparo – he does his best to make sure we STILL get to hate on Magog for being the WORST. He could have tried to redeem him but phew thankfully we are all on the same page.

    I’ve barely touched on the issue at all because really I don’t want to – much like the guest host this month. But I guess I am going to go back now and see if the sales pitch from Shag works and this issue is unlike Shag – redeemable (I’m hoping I can redeem it for a fun fair token or something). However I don’t hold out much hope.

    This show however was brilliant fun so thanks for filing in the rest of my day while I was able to cook a lasagne while the family were out – sadly they got home before I could consume the lasagne myself so I had to share it for dinner. Koo-dos to Mr Koos for bringing the same level of fun and energy he did the last time he was on which was what only a few months ago? For those of us like John and myself who binged on the show over the last year it’s been fun to now be on the same schedule as everyone else to give a bit more time to reflect on each episode for comments. I noticed in the Justice Log there are other bingers trying to catch up and I wondered if perhaps the “repackaged” idea has merit for a “Highlights” show perhaps to give those far behind a bit more time. However that would add even more time to the show and while I’m delighted that we still have a year left of JLI Podcast – It’s maybe unfair to Shag to have him go even longer. While the fans for the show are like a parole board demanding more time in Podcast prison he should be allowed out eventually right? Then again what if there’s ANOTHER JLMay episode to shoe horn in next year… ?

  22. Maybe I’m the bad guy here, but I’m okay with Goat Man tearing his arm off if it was the only way in the moment to save those kids. Plus, that terrorist seemed to take it pretty well. He’s even standing up in one of the last panels, so I guess no crying over torn arms. Book him!

    Not a doily in site, I’m afraid, but there’s some nice checkerboard flooring with arm blood all over it.

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