On the very first panel of the very first page of the very first Booster Gold comic, readers were introduced to Blaze Comics. "BC" would go on to produce the Booster Gold comic within the DC Universe, making Booster Gold a comic book character who appeared as a comic book character in a comic book.

Before Booster Gold, the most famous story to include a comic-within-a-comic must "Flash of Two Worlds" (The Flash #123, 1961). That story introduced the multiverse to readers of DC Comics when Barry Allen of Earth-1 read comics about the adventures of his predecessor Jay Garrick of Earth-2.

Because Booster Gold debuted after the multiverse-killing Crisis on Infinite Earths, his comic-within-a-comic must be about his own adventures. If you think about it, this sets up a meta-textural Droste effect, an infinite recursion of Booster Gold comic books including Booster Gold comic books.

(Could Grant Morrison have been inspired by this concept? His Animal Man stories in which superhero Buddy Baker learned he was a comic character wouldn't be published until several years later.)

What was Dan Jurgens thinking by starting his new comic with the story of the creation of a comic? Was Jurgens revealing the true, behind-the-scenes story of the creation of Booster Gold volume 1? To find out, I asked him.

I took that approach because I thought it was something readers might genuinely enjoy. There was something fun about the idea of a comic within a comic.

In retrospect, I kind of wish I had taken a couple of issues to actually build up to it.

Jurgens must have done something right. Blaze Comics has gone on to appear in both video games and movies in the years since its debut.

I also asked Jurgens whether Blaze editor Skip Andrews or artists Benny and Marty were intended to be representative of any particular real-world people. Benny and Marty evoke referenes to Marv Wolfman and George Pérez, creators of the bestselling Teen Titans comics. Did Wolfman and Pérez ever return the favor and put Jurgens in one of their comics?

I wouldn't go that far with Benny and Marty, though there may be a hint of truth to it. In a way, they were based more on the idea of team books and their creative teams of that era.

Skip Andrews was more of an amalgam, based on several editors I knew at the time.

As for any Dan Jurgens doppelgänger, that's a story still waiting to be told!

I'm sure I'm not the only one who looks forward to reading that story.

Thanks to Dan Jurgens for putting pencil to paper and giving us such great comics.

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