As you may have seen on the usual comic news sites like CBR.com, the complete Warner Bros. animated feature film Scooby-Doo! and Krypto, Too!, featuring a crossover between Hanna-Barbara's canine crime-solver and the Justice League, was leaked to the Internet this past weekend.

The leak is an undisputed fact. (I've seen the file. More on that in a minute.) What's not clear to me — or apparently to anyone else — is the motivation behind the leak.

These are other undisputed facts: Warner Bros. cancelled Scoob! Holiday Haunt¹ and Scooby Doo! and the Haunted High Rise² late last year as part of their tax write-down strategy. Last week, they also cancelled a third project, Scooby-Doo! and the Mystery Pups³.

But so far as I can tell, no one officially connected to Scooby-Doo! and Krypto, Too!, either at Warner Bros. or production company Digital eMation, has said anything publicly about whether or not Krypto, Too! has actually been cancelled. That's what CBR and almost every other website reporting on this story has said, but not a single one of those reports provides a single source confirming the cancellation. I think that's weird. (For the record, I also think it's bad journalism, but we seem to be losing that fight on a daily basis.)

Frankly, I can think of a lot of reasons why the movie might have been leaked, especially in light of WB's recent instability. I'm not yet convinced that the movie won't one day be released through official channels. For example, the film has a 2023 copyright date in its credits, and there's still listing on Amazon UK for a September 25, 2023, PAL DVD release.

I'm holding out hope for a public release because, as Booster booster Koby first notified me, Skeets is in the movie! As I said above, I've seen enough to confirm that DC's Number 1 Robot Sidekick appears in the background inside the Hall of Justice Trophy Room, right beside a model of the Blue Beetle's Bug. It's a pretty cool Easter egg. Maybe one day, everyone can enjoy it.

[Sources: ¹ gamerant.com, ² comicbook.com, ³ tvseriesfinale.com. See, that's not so hard.]

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Grant Morrison became a fan favorite writer by tweaking threadbare superhero genre tropes to breathe new life into the JLA, Superman, and Batman mythos.

But before Damian Wayne or All-Star Superman or "Mageddon," Grant honed a talent for thinking outside the four-color corner box with often bizarre deconstructionist experimental comics like The Invisibles, Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth, and The Doom Patrol. That last one was especially fitting, as the Doom Patrol had billed itself as "The World's Strangest Heroes" since it's earliest appearances in 1964.

Booster Gold would find out just how strange they were in Doom Patrol #29, released on this day in 1989. The Justice League International confronted Morrison's brand of psychedelic madness head-on after Mister Nobody and his Brotherhood of Dada displayed a stolen painting that eats people (and also happens to contain the Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse, "Extinction") under the Eiffel Tower and... well, see for yourself:

art by Richard Case, John Nyberg, Danny Vozzo, John E. Workman

Just another regular day on the job for Morrison's Doom Patrol.

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Tales of the Human Target is due to arrive in your Local Comic Shop next week, on August 23. Tales is an anthology book, with stories featuring Guy Gardner, Fire, and Booster Gold. According to Newsarama @ gamesradar.com, Booster Gold was chosen because that's who Kevin Maguire wanted to draw. I'm very much okay with that.

That Newsarama article hyperlinked above is an interview between Grant DeAmitt and Tom King about a whole bunch of Human Target-related stuff. Importantly for Booster boosters, it includes an on-the-record discussion about why King keeps putting a dumbed-down version of Booster Gold in his stories:

Nrama: Okay, moving on, the next character that's in Tales is Booster Gold.

King: My favorite character in comics. I love writing him.

Nrama: Oh yeah?

King: I tell Dan Jurgens all the time, 'thank you for creating this character.' Even if I write him a little differently than Dan would write him, because Dan writes him a little smarter than I write him. I write him a little more goofy. But I love that sort of goofiness of him.

Nrama: Is that what attracts you to the character? The goofiness?

King: There are two things that attract me. Number one, I write these tragic, sad things. I never get to write funny. I love writing funny. I love comedy. It's a chance to get into that. And yeah, there's this like, don't tell anybody this, but I base him kind of on Futurama, on Zapp Brannigan and Kiff. You know how Skeets is his partner who, like, loves him and hates him at the same time? I love that.

I also love – this is the thing I got from Jurgens. What Jurgens understands about this character is, that in the end, Booster does the right thing and doesn't get credit for it. He's the superhero who's like, yes, he first thinks of himself. Yes, he first thinks of money. Yes, he's a goofball. But at the end of the day, he's really a really good person. He really is self-sacrificial. But just because of all that other bravado stuff, nobody gets to see that part of it. He's one of the nicest, best heroes in the DC Universe. Everyone assumes that because he's a goofball, he's not good. And I love that about him.

Nrama: So in the beginning of Tales, when he has that monologue about being just like Superman, he's actually right? He's closer to Superman than we give him credit for.

King: People forget that in 52, the big DC event, he was the Superman for a time. A character called Supernova. So again, you read that and you're laughing at him, but there is something in him that's just a little Superman.

The craziest part about Booster is that he had the stupidest plan in the world. He's like, I'm going to go into the past. I'm going to steal a bunch of tech and go back and be a superhero. And then he actually did it! He executed the stupidest plan, and it worked! There's something Brave and Bold about that.

Futurama? Really?

That said, all jokes — and my personal appreciation for King's ouevre — aside, I don't want to discourage anyone from enjoying Booster Gold for whatever reason they find to enjoy him, even if their reason isn't mine.

Live and let Booster Gold.

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Now that Donald Faison is playing Booster Gold in the CW's "Arrowverse," there appears to be a groundswell of fan support for his Scrubs and Fake Doctors, Real Friends co-star Zach Braff to play Booster's best friend, Blue Beetle.

But would Braff even want to do it?

Thankfully for all Blue and Gold fandom, ScreenRant.com writer Nathan Graham-Lowery put the question to Braff directly.

ScreenRant: Now, what are the chances we can get you to re-team up and you can play Booster's best friend, the Blue Beetle, Ted Kord?

Zach Braff: That's what I heard. I heard rumors, and I know nothing about comic books, but when Donald got this part, my social media blew up with 'You got to play Ted Kord now'. Now I don't know who Ted Kord is. I'm sorry, comic book fans, but I would love to play Ted Kord. You can start the rumor. I'm down to play Ted Kord. I don't know anything about Ted Kord, but I'll do it.

That might sound crazy, but having no idea who your character is seems to be exactly what casting agents for the Arrowverse are looking for.

I look forward to seeing a Faison/Braff television reunion... should Legends of Tomorrow ever actually be renewed for an 8th season.

(According to TVLine.com, LoT is one of 12 current CW shows that have not yet been renewed or officially canceled yet. Apparently, the CW's parent companies [Paramount and WarnerMedia] are trying to sell the network, and conventional wisdom is that executives are waiting to see what their new parents have in mind before making any more commitments. I guess we'll see what we see whenever we see it.)

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Writer Joshua Williamson continues to channel Grant Morrison for Justice League Incarnate, and in this week's issue 3 the team takes a side trip to Earth-33 (the reincarnation of former Earth-Prime, home of the multiversal villain Superboy-Prime), now the Earth where ideas are born. One idea is obviously Booster Gold, as seen in this fella's t-shirt:

Footnote 1 — I know that this is a Booster Gold fansite, but I personally think that the real value of Justice League Incarnate #3 lies not in the reveal of "Booster Gold t-shirt guy" of Earth-33 but the discovery that Doctor Batman has been sent to Earth-26, formerly known as Earth-C. Last we'd heard, in Dark Nights: Death Metal: Multiverse’s End #1, Captain Carrot's "funny animals" Earth-C Earth-26 Zoo Crew had been killed by Perpetua's minions (so dark!). It's good to know that my favorite childhood heroes are alive and well again in the Infinite Frontier-era Omniverse. Hooray!

Footnote 2 — Earth-26, Earth-Prime, Earth-33, Earth-C, Multiverse, Hypertime, Dark Multiverse, Omniverse... boy, howdy. Does anyone else remember that 1985's Crisis on Infinite Earths was supposed to simplify the DC Universe to make it accessible to new readers? So why, now that the multiverse is back, is it more complicated than ever before? Did we finally just give up on new readers?

Footnote 3 — Both Justice League Incarnate and Justice League Infinity, both released this week and both featuring Booster Gold references, are about plots to destroy the multiverse. (Technically, they are separate multiverses, as the JLU never crosses over with the original JLA.) It sure seems like even DC's writers think the darn thing has gotten too complicated.

Oops. I'm starting to sound a bit like Superboy-Prime myself, aren't I?

Never mind grumpy old me. Buy some comics and make Skeets happy.

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