San Diego Comic Con was this past weekend, and it would have been the perfect time for DC Comics to leverage Booster Gold's recent starring role in Heroes in Crisis into some new material. So what, if anything, did we learn about Booster Gold this year? Not much.

Let us count the ways.

1. Tom King continues to miss the point of how bad Heroes in Crisis was.

At the show, Tom King was awarded the 2019 Best Writer Eisner Award for Batman, Mister Miracle, Heroes in Crisis, Swamp Thing Winter Special. Congratulations to him. As much as I complain about his writing, he seems like a decent guy. But please, Tom, never write Booster Gold again, especially since you don't seem to understand (or maybe, to accept) the weaknesses in your stories as published.

Per Newsarama.com's coverage of the Tom King panel:

"I loved [HiC]," said King. "I think killing Wally was a tough pill for people to swallow." ... King says Wally did not actually murder anyone, and to him, Wally is the hero of Heroes In Crisis.

I really don't mean to rip the band-aid off the nightmare that was Heroes in Crisis (unquestionably the worst comic series I've read in the past 12 months), but if King is going to be rewarded for mischaracterization in pursuit of whatever it was he thinks he was doing in that story, I can't keep quiet.

Wally may not be a "villain" in a traditional comic-book-morality sense, but who tried to cover up an accident by framing other heroes? Who stole from his "friends"? Who took steps to reveal the secret identities of the Justice League to the public? Who was planning to commit murder of his future self? That would be the villain of the piece: Wally West.

The moral of Heroes in Crisis isn't that sometimes bad things happen to good people; it's.... Hell, I still don't know what the moral is, but I'm sure it isn't "if you're having a bad day, go ahead and frame your friends for murder."

Meanwhile, who was it that fought to find the truth despite a public manhunt against him? And who turned his friends for support when he needed help most? And who managed to avoid the worst possible outcome? That would be the hero of the story: Booster Gold.

Maybe the moral is that real heroes don't get the credit they deserve for their bravery, determination, and compassion. Yeah, maybe that's it.

2. Booster Gold will make at least a cameo appearance in Batman: Last Knight on Earth #2.

The Blot wasn't at Comic Con this year, but he did spot our hero in Twitter.com coverage of the DC Black Label panel featuring artwork for the coming book. See if you've got better eyes than The Blot. (I don't.)

That's kind of small. Here's the half with Booster.

Need a little more? Ok, here he is standing in front of... Evil Star, maybe?

You'll find Batman: Last Knight on Earth #2, with art by Greg Capullo, in your Local Comic Shop next week.

3. You can read all of Booster Gold volume 1 on the DC All Access mobile app.

Okay, fine. This wasn't actually announced at SDCC, but it should have been.

This news about the DC Comics All Access App actually came to my inbox this weekend by way of an update from Bob Rossetto, who originally alerted us to the app's Gold deficiency back in September 2018. I'm very pleased that DC has finally fixed that oversight and made Booster more widely available to new audiences. Hooray!

Thanks to Blot and Bob both.

Comments (6) | Add a Comment | Tags: 2019 batman blot bob rossetto comic-con conventions greg capullo heroes in crisis newsarama.com tom king twitter.com

Heroes in Crisis #9 is out today, putting a period on a frankly disappointing mini-series. All's well that, well, ends.

Newsarama.com has the issue preview, which delightfully gives almost nothing away for a change. We'll all be surprised when we get to our Local Comic Shops today.

Buy this issue and make Skeets happy!

Comments (2) | Add a Comment | Tags: heroes in crisis new releases newsarama.com previews

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.

Comments (2) | Add a Comment | Tags: comicbook.com heroes in crisis interview russ burlingame tom king

DC has released August solicitations, and as expected, Booster Gold volume 1 is getting a full color reprint!

BOOSTER GOLD: THE BIG FALL HC
written by DAN JURGENS
art by DAN JURGENS and MIKE DeCARLO
These are the 1980s tales that introduced Booster Gold, the glory-hungry hero who traveled back in time from the 25th century to become a superhero called Goldstar—but manages to mangle both his mission and his name, winding up with the oddball name by which he is known. In these stories, while battling rad 1980s super-villains, Booster attempts to line up endorsement deals with limited success. Collects BOOSTER GOLD #1-12 in color for the first time, plus design material, unpublished story pages and more.
ON SALE September 25, $39.99 US

Sadly, it doesn't look like we'll be seeing Booster Gold anywhere else this August, because the only other mention of our hero is in another reprint that won't arrive until late September.

HEROES IN CRISIS HC
written by TOM KING
art by CLAY MANN, TRAVIS MOORE, LEE WEEKS, MITCH GERADS and JORGE FORNES
There's a new kind of crisis threatening the heroes of the DC Universe, ripped from real-world headlines by CIA 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? This collected edition features the entire nine-issue miniseries!
ON SALE September 25, $19.99

How *does* a hero handle PTSD? According to the story itself, the answer is "he kills a bunch of innocent people and then frames some other innocent people so that he won't be caught." Ick.

Comments (5) | Add a Comment | Tags: amazon.com heroes in crisis solicitations

Newsarama.com reports that Heroes in Crisis #9 will be delayed a week until May 29. They insinuate that this was an editorial decision to coincide the release with that of the much-delayed Doomsday Clock #10. Is Doctor Manhattan now to blame for the events of Heroes in Crisis, too?

(Side note: when reading Tom King's work, I so often feel like I understand what he was trying to say while simultaneously being terribly frustrated by how he has chosen to try to say it. In that vein, Heroes in Crisis could be one of the most irritating stories I've ever bought. King clearly wants to say some real things about a real public health crisis, but his message gets lost in a murder-mystery with a reveal that is impossible to see coming — the story admits that there are literally no clues — and makes the misguided decision to turn a beloved hero into a super villain [re-writing his powers in the process] in a manner that only serves to reinforce the initial public perceptions that King ostensibly wants to break down. Grr.)

Any-way.

Speaking of Heroes in Crisis, you may have noticed that Booster Gold appears only in flashback in issue #8. At least that's what I thought when I first read it. It was only on re-read that I realized that Booster's looming presence is probably foreshadowed (pun intended) in these panels set in the present.

See that big, round shadow? The big shadow. Not the little shadows within that shadow. (Does the Speed Force cast shadows now?) It sure seems to me that big round shadow is the Blue Beetle's Bug airship arriving to witness this pivotal scene.

A recent tweeted by Tom King of the splash page for Issue #9, showcasing the Bug streaking across a breathtaking sunset, looks to confirm my theory.

Art by Clay Mann & Tomeu Morey

Great Caesar's Ghost, that's amazing. My complaints about shadows (and Tom King's style) aside, this series really does have some of the most sublime art ever seen in a mainstream comic book.

Comments (0) | Add a Comment | Tags: blue beetle clay mann flash heroes in crisis newsarama.com tom king tomeu morey