If you watched The Flash season 8 episode "Impulsive Excessive Disorder" on Wednesday night, you must have seen this:

Nicole Drum provides a recap of Booster's appearance at ComicBook.com, but the article fails to mention that the White House visit is clearly a nod to Booster Gold's comic book origin story (as told in Booster Gold #8 and #9).

Meanwhile, over at EW.com, Chancellor Agard got the behind-the-scenes story of how the cameo came to be directly from Flash showrunner Eric Wallace:

"It was just a kind of a fun coincidence," he tells EW. "I was in post working on episode 806 and I knew the kids, Bart and Nora, would be looking at future things in the Flash Museum. And the head of post for our show and for Legends is the same person, Geoff Garrett. He happened to mention, 'Oh, by the way, don't tell anybody, but Booster Gold is going to be appearing in the finale of Legends.' I'm big Booster Gold fan, and I went, 'Hey, have they cast that person yet? I have a crazy thought. What if we see our kids in this episode looking through newspapers and we see whoever you guys have cast really fast, kind of a connected thing?' And he said, 'Well, it's funny you should mention that, Eric, because the finale of Legends airs the week before Flash returns.'"

Wallace continues: "So we made a few calls. I called up Phil [Klemmer], the showrunner of Legends, pitched him the idea. After he stopped laughing so hard he's like, 'Of course, definitely do that.' And then it was a very simple matter of just talking to the actor Donald Faison and getting his permission just to use a picture. He was into it. Next thing you know, it's in the show. It all happened in literally 24 hours. It was hilarious."

Now that Donald Faison's Booster has been in two "Arrowverse" CW shows two weeks in a row, I'm starting to wonder if this isn't the beginning of a trend? I sure hope so. Personally, I'd like to see Booster Gold on every television show every day; I just can't get enough of that guy.

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Whether or not I'm a fan of CW's programming, I have to admit that Donald Faison's portrayal of Booster Gold on DC's Legends of Tomorrow season 7 finale has certainly raised the profile of the character and introduced him to a whole bunch of people who have never actually set their hands on a DC comic. That's an objectively good thing.

So it is a worthwhile experience to read how the show's executive producer Phil Klemmer finally got around to adding Booster to his long-running show.

Here he speaks to Chancellor Agard for ew.com:

EW: Arrowverse boss Greg Berlanti has reportedly been working on a Booster Gold movie for years. How did the character wind up on Legends?

Klemmer: As you might expect, through the side door you'd least expect it [to]. I just remember [co-showrunner Keto Shimizu] and I were on a call with Kim Roberto at DC, and we were just talking about fun characters. I think somebody threw it out there, of course never [imagining] in a million years would we get Booster Gold. And then it felt like 15 minutes later, DC called us back and was just like, "Hey, Booster's yours." And just you have a moment of being like, "Okay, this is clearly a prank of some sort, because..." We were all giddy and in disbelief and then it just became a quest of finding an actor who was worthy of the character.

EW: Why was Booster Gold on your mind to begin with? Were you just looking for a DC character to bring in at the end of the season? How did Booster end up fitting the needs of the story?

Klemmer: It's always the tonal fit and just knowing, I don't know, there's just something so lovable and unexpected. You just knew that he was going to work as kind of a bit of the merry prankster, a bit of a BS artist.

Klemmer was also quizzed by Joshua Lapin-Bertone at DCComics.com:

DC: How familiar were you with Booster before this?

Klemmer: I just knew about him from the early days of Legends, when I would hear of various projects, whether they were TV shows or movies, in the same halls where I was working. And obviously dealing with Rip Hunter in early seasons as well. I just assumed that he was going to have his own project. I never imagined that he would come into our world.

DC: For building this version of Booster, did you draw upon any particular stories? Or did you build him from the ground up?

Klemmer: The creation of a character really takes place over the course of that first season, and then seasons to come. It's going to really be a correspondence between us as writers and Donald as a performer. We definitely wanted someone who is a little off center, and like, a little bit mischievous. But we also just wanted a charisma bomb.

And we round out our media tour with Klemmer's conversation with Damian Holbrook of TVInsider.com:

TV: Is the plan to keep Donald on the board?

Klemmer: For sure. We're not gonna let Booster get away. I'm really excited to write him—he's the kind of character you wish you could be. You could get away with murder and be so charming that you never really have to suffer the consequences. He's the antithesis of a writer. Writers are deeply neurotic and self-loathing self-doubting, etcetera. I think that's why we writers are drawn to those characters—because those are our secret alter egos.

Season 8 has not yet been announced. Will there be another season of Legends of Tomorrow? If I were a betting man, I'd bet yes (especially if Michael "Booster" Carter is on the field). Legends of Tomorrow is one of the few CW shows that has improved its ratings season-over-season, so I think we should prepare to see more of Klemmer and Faison's Gold come fall.

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Earlier this week, we learned via aiptcomics.com that DC will be revisiting the Flashpoint universe in a seven-issue event called Flashpoint Beyond starting in April.

It remains to be seen what role (if any) Booster Gold will be playing in this event, but we do know that he will be on the 1:50 variant cover to Flashpoint Beyond #0 drawn by Todd Nauck:

click image to see original on Twitter.com

Now, a "1:50 variant" means that for every 50 copies a comic shop orders of the regular cover, they *should* get 1 of these. (I say "should" because distribution shortages and allocations have been known to happen.) I suggest that any Booster boosters who wants this in their collection go ahead and preorder 51 copies of Flashpoint Beyond #0 from their their LCS.

But that's not the only variant cover we'll be seeing Booster on in April!

As you may have heard, Entertainment Weekly broke the news that the Justice League will be killed off in April's Justice League #75. (Don't worry too much: comics being what they are, I'm sure they'll get better.)

In a tribute to the 30th anniversary of the "death" of Superman (see what I mean?), one of the many variant covers of Justice League #75 will be drawn by Dan Jurgens and Norm Rapmund and feature many former leaguers, including Booster Gold and two Blue Beetles!

click image to see original on Twitter.com

This cover should be easier to get than a 1:50, but we'll have to find out more as we get closer to April.

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DC Comics announced a new comic series on Wednesday via a press release. Mainstream media sites which usually ignore comic books, such as Entertainment Weekly, The Hollywood Reporter, and Newsweek, decided the announcement was newsworthy.

What could make this series such a big deal? Perhaps because Booster Gold is invlovled.

Per the original press release at DCComics.com:

(June 13, 2018 — Burbank, CA) There's a crisis headed toward DC's greatest heroes, but it isn't coming from outer space or another dimension—this time, the threat is homegrown. DC proudly presents a new seven-issue miniseries debuting in September by Tom King and his BATMAN collaborator/artist Clay Mann, titled HEROES IN CRISIS.

A former counterterrorism operations officer with the CIA, [Tom] King's bestselling, critically acclaimed comics—including THE SHERIFF OF BABYLON, THE OMEGA MEN, BATMAN, MISTER MIRACLE—have often grappled with war and conflict, and a hero's struggle to put their war and their trauma behind them. This new series will explore similar themes against the backdrop of a murder mystery involving Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Harley Quinn, Booster Gold, and the rest of the World's Greatest Super Heroes.

Boy, doesn't that sound exciting? Booster Gold working with DC's heaviest hitters solving a mystery? It's a Booster Gold fan's dream come true!

But not so fast! Yesterday, Newsarama revealed what appears to be the issue's upcoming solicitation text. The solicitation casts the story in a slightly different light that might *not* be everything a Booster booster could hope for.

Per the "Heroes in Crisis" fact sheet:

There's a new kind of crisis facing the heroes of the DC Universe, ripped from the real-world headlines by C.I.A.-operative-turned-comics-writer Tom King: How does a superhero handle PTSD? Welcome to Sanctuary, an ultra-secret hospital for superheroes who've been traumatized by crime-fighting and cosmic combat. But something goes inexplicably wrong when many patients wind up dead, with two well known operators as the prime suspects: Harley Quinn and Booster Gold! It's up to the DC Trinity of Superman, Wonder Woman and Batman to investigate — but can they get the job done in the face of overwhelming opposition?

Apparently Booster Gold has a new archnemesis, and his name is Tom King.

Arrgh. Murder! Death! Kill! What kind of "community-building" story about overcoming PTSD could be built upon the death of all the patients who sought help?

Before I work myself further into a frenzy over this, let me remind me that advance solicitations for King's stories tend to vary widely from what actually sees print. The solicitations for Batman #45 is a prime example.

Per the original solicitation for that issue:

"THE TRAVELERS" part one! Booster Gold has come to Gotham City, and he's enlisting Batman and Catwoman to go on a time-traveling mission to rescue...Booster Gold! It seems a younger Booster Gold has gone back in time to kidnap an even younger version of himself, and to rescue his own past, Booster must pursue both of his previous incarnations through Batman's history to find out what is going on. The start of a new story that will sow the seeds for a whole new epic to come....

As we now know, when that story was eventually published as "The Gift," it looked almost nothing like what was promoted outside the inclusion of Booster Gold and Batman. Maybe Heroes in Crisis will be something like that. Maybe Booster Gold will be the detective that solves the crime and saves the day.

Or maybe Booster will be the same as the last time we saw King write him: a short-sighted idiot who enabled a mass homicide.

My hopes are not high.

Everyone can decide for themselves if King redeems his poor treatment of Booster Gold when the first issue of Heroes in Crisis is released on September 26.

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In case you missed it, the movie Justice League is opening this week. In cross promotion of the event, Entertainment Weekly's Darren Franich interviewed Justice League International co-creator J.M. DeMatteis.

EW: How did the specific tone of Justice League International develop?

JMD: No one ever said to me when we started, "Oh, we're doing Funny Justice League." It just evolved naturally. The more we went along, the more we realized that what we had on our hands was a superhero sitcom. But we never set out to do that. The minute you sit down and think, "I'm going to be funny," you're probably screwed.

Around the same time, I was writing "Kraven's Last Hunt," which is as dark a Spider-Man story as has ever been written. I wasn't thinking, "Now I'm doing this in clever contrast, we are answering the grim and gritty stories with our version of light and happy!" We just followed the characters. Keith [Giffen] would write the plots and set up these situations, I would start writing the dialogue, and the characters would start talking to each other. Beetle and Booster really created that team, not us.

Shh! Don't let Booster hear you say that. He'll get a big head!

You can read the whole interview at EW.com. (And you can see Justice League in theaters Friday.)

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