The TwoMorrows website says that the Spring 2024 issue of Comic Book Creator will be released on April 10, but my issue arrived in my mailbox late last week. That may be because I ordered it as soon as it was announced that the issue's feature interview would be with Booster Gold creator Dan Jurgens!

And what a great long-form interview it is! Over the course of 33 pages, interviewer Greg Biga asks Dan about his entire career, from his early days breaking into the business working on Mike Grell's Warlord through his experiences working on characters like Flash Gordon, Spider-Man, Thor, and, of course, lots of Superman.

The interview reveals some great information that will delight Jurgens fans, including some trivia nuggets even I had never heard before. From page 57:

CBC: I'm going to skip past asking the questions you've heard a thousand times, and circle back to do follow-up questions on "Death of Superman." With that story having happened, with "Funeral for a Friend," was one of the main reasons behind that to show how relevant this character of light and hope was?

Dan: That's going to be something of a long answer and, for part of it, we do have to come back to the overall discussion of "Death of Superman" a little bit. For some time, I'd had in the back of my mind that I could make a big adventure story out of killing off a title character and investigating how his absence affects his friends, family, and the people who rely on him.

By the way, I first thought of the idea when I was working on Booster Gold. Booster wasn't like any of the other characters in the DC Universe at the time, and the book was struggling to find an audience. Readers seemed to think Booster was a jerk. That's why I introduced his twin sister, Michelle. That way I could kill off Booster but we could keep the book going as Michelle stepped into her brother's role playing a somewhat more conventional hero while we explored what Booster had gotten right and wrong. Kind of an evil twin, good twin scenario. I was going to retitle it Busty Gold.

I wish I'd know that during Women's History Month! Can you imagine "good twin" Michelle taking Booster's place in the Justice League International?

For more gold nuggets like these, be sure to pick up your own copy of Comic Book Creator #34 at twomorrows.com.

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In addition to being the final issue of Justice League International volume 1 (next issue the team will be downsized to just Justice League America), Justice League International #25 is also the first book-length team-up between Booster Gold and Blue Beetle. Historic!

My favorite page comes early, which is probably not a surprise to those of you who know that Ty Templeton is one of my favorite artists. He only drew the intro and outro pages of this issue (over Keith Giffen's layouts), with the rest handled by Mike McKone (also over Giffen).

But it's not just the art I love; almost every panel on page 3 has its own punchline!

Despite the early (and often) jokes, the main plot of this team-up issue is a vampire hunt that turns into an overt criticism of Western consumer culture which, in Twilight Zone style, questions who the real monsters are on plane Earth. As Booster and Beetle (and the reader) will eventually realize, it just might be our heroes.

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I recently saw this piece for sale at a very decent price and decided that I had to own it.

As you can see, that's page 9 of Booster Gold Volume 2 #33, with pencils by Chris Batista and inks by Rich Perotta and Prentis Rollins. Which of the two inked this page? Did one do foregrounds and the other backgrounds? I don't know.

What I do know is why I chose this page as my first ever piece of original comic book art. As Rip Hunter can tell you, it's all about the collar.

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The Booster Gold/Blue Beetle team-up story you can't buy this week resides exclusively at Ross Pearsall's Super-Team Family Presents... blog at braveandboldlost.blogspot.com.

Blue and Gold seem a little out of their depth here, but when has that ever stopped them before? Keep up the good work, Ross.

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Cort Carpenter has dedicated himself to compiling the World's Best Booster Gold Sketchbook. And it just keeps getting better!

Take a gander at these seven newest additions:

Heather Antos

Russ Braun

Kerry Callen

Mike Choi

Travis Mercer

Rachel Ordway

Joshua "Sway" Swaby

By my count, that's 106 different commissions Cort has now shared with us over the years. I'm sure I speak for Booster boosters everywhere when I say we sure like looking at them.

Comments (1) | Add a Comment | Tags: commissions cort carpenter fan art heather antos joshua sway swaby kerry callen mike choi rachel ordway russ braun travis mercer