"Is Harley Quinn The Mother of Booster Gold's Son?"

That's the question that Russ Burlingame asks and tries to answer in an article this week on ComicBook.com. As he puts it:

That is, an older, future version of Booster Gold once revealed that he has a son. In fact, his son is Rip Hunter who, because of the magic of time-travel, is one of Booster's mentors in the whole Time Masters business. So, as with any woman who enters into a relationship with Booster, we have to ask: does this mean Harley could be Rip Hunter's mom?

Essentially, Burlingame is tugging at the dangling plot thread first teased in Time Masters: Vanishing Point, a mini-series published 10 years ago. The history of the DC universe has been rebooted at least three times since then. And Harley Quinn has always played by its own continuity rules anyway. Why does that decade-old, unanswered thread still itch?

Like the final fate of Amelia Earhart or the purpose behind the heads on Easter Island, it's the unanswered mysteries that continue to hold our attention even when the truth probably doesn't really matter anymore.

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As many, many people have told me, Booster Gold appears in the October 2020 DC Comics solicitations. This is — as all Booster Gold appearances should be — Big News, big enough to be covered by many of the usual comic book news websites.

Compare the headlines "Batman vs. Batman Beyond Is Happening - And It's Booster Gold's Fault" and "Batman Will Finally Fight Batman Beyond Thanks to Booster Gold". The former belongs to CBR.com, who never misses a chance to troll Booster Gold fans. The latter belongs to ComicBook.com, where the Internet's foremost Booster Gold reporter, Russ Burlingame, adds a lot more context and a bit of speculation based on his past experience with the character. I'll leave you to your judgment which of those two links you should read.

Or, if you're in a hurry, you can just read the original solicitation below:

BATMAN BEYOND #48
written by DAN JURGENS
art by SEAN CHEN
cover by DAN MORA

"First Contact" begins! Something is very, very wrong with Bruce Wayne, as he lashes out in anger and tries to kill Batman Beyond! Who else can save him but...Booster Gold?! The greatest hero history never knew is going to take Batman Beyond back in time to the Gotham of old, where Bruce Wayne is Batman—which means Batman and Batman Beyond will meet at last!
ON SALE October 27, 2020

No matter whose fault it is, Batman must be getting tired of Booster Gold interfering with his destiny.

Though Batman Beyond #48 was the only solicitation to mention Booster Gold by name (and the only one to get promoted in the comic book press), our hero also appears in the announced reprint collections of Heroes in Crisis, plus lesser appearances in Batman/Superman Vol 1, Justice League Unlimited: Time After Time, and Underworld Unleashed: The 25th Anniversary TP.

You can find the complete list of DC October 2020 solicitations at GamesRader.com.

Keep your piggy banks nearby, Booster boosters. You're going to need all your pennies this October.

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Booster's not in anything this week that I'm aware of, which gives me another opportunity to address a book that came out last week. That book is Superman #23, and it has created quite a stir thanks to this panel:

As I type this, that panel of the world's worst photographer has been liked and retweeted on Twitter more than 200,000 times. Artist Kevin Maguire tweeted, "This is probably the biggest reaction to a panel I've done since 'One punch'."

(If you don't know "One Punch," you've got some good comics to look forward to. Russ Burlingame has a quick explainer of the events of Justice League #5 over at comicbook.com.)

But what gets me about that panel is why all those people in the lobby of the Hall of Justice would want a picture of Superman when Booster Gold is standing right there!

Silly tourists. They might as well be outside taking pictures of birds and planes.

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I thought Booster Gold's appearance in a DCeased one-shot would be the biggest news of the week, especially as it looks like Booster was excluded from the comics spinning-off from Heroes in Crisis (per Hollywood Reporter). I was wrong.

Over on ComicBook.com, Russ Burlingame has interviewed writer Brian Michael Bendis about his plans for a new Millennium mini-series that will reintroduce readers to DC's future continuity on the way to launching new Legion of Super-Heroes stories. That news would be welcome enough without the bonus announcement that Space Museum security guard Michael Jon Carter will be playing a role in Legion of Super-Heroes: Millennium issue 2.

Burlingame: It's funny, seeing Booster becoming part of a building block to the Legion, since he has sparred with them a few times about his stolen Legion ring!

Bendis: Speaking of which, the Booster Gold chapter is drawn by Nicola Scott, if you need another reason to buy this. I love Nicola's work so much, but she's one of my closest friend's closest collaborators. She works with Greg Rucka so closely that I never thought I'd get a chance to do something, and we did this thing together. It's just, on a personal level, one of my great moments as a comics creator that I got to do this with Nicola.

Burlingame: I won't lie: at either San Diego or New York last year, I spoke with her briefly and we ended up talking about how much she wanted to draw Booster.

Bendis: That happened a few times on this project. I don't want to speak for the other creators, but I had accidentally said, "Hey, I think you'd be perfect for (blank)." And they go, "That's my favorite thing, I can't believe you're asking!" It happened quite a few times on this project. I get excited, because I know for the few pages they're drawing, it's going to be among the best pages of their whole careers, because they think this might be the only chance they get to do it. Nicola's Booster pages reek with the feeling of, "Oh, my God, I finally got to draw Booster Gold."

DC has already released a few pages from the issue (visible at Newsarama.com). I'm in no position to judge whether they are the best of Scott's whole career, but they are pretty darn Boosterrific.

Judging from those panels, it sure looks like DC will be allowing Bendis to roll back Booster's New 52 origin and realigning his "past" with his pre-Flashpoint beginnings. Super sweet.

For more information about the upcoming series and to read the rest of the interview, visit ComicBook.com. Expect the book to arrive in your Local Comic Shop this September.

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Heroes in Crisis wraps up on Wednesday. King recently spoke with Russ Burlingame, the Internet's #1 Booster Gold reporter, about the series' origins.

Burlingame: This all started with Harley and Booster, and you talked a lot about how much you love those characters and obviously you've gotten to write them a lot. How strange has it been that you spent six months elevating those characters, and now the big takeaway is like "holy s--t, Wally!"?

King: You go back to what I did with Booster in the beginning, and I did it in Batman. It was like "what? What did you do to Booster? You made him so terrible." And now as you see in Heroes in Crisis, he came back from being terrible and now he's kicking ass again. This was always about those three characters. It was a Harley story, a Wally story, and was a Booster story. As I've said many times before, I don't pick the characters for my story; I give my plot to the editors and then the editors pick the characters for me. So I told them in the beginning, "this is what it's going to be -- it's going to be about one hero who's made a mistake and it's going to be about the two heroes that get framed for that mistake." And they said, "okay, it's Booster, Harley, and Wally, those are the three characters." I mean they're a joy to write, I love writing them. That's almost what I miss the most about this book is writing those two. Booster is the most fun character in comics, except maybe Hal Jordan.

I'm pleased that DC editorial is always looking for new places to put Booster Gold. (How about a team book with, say, Blue Beetle?)

You can read the whole interview at ComicBook.com.

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