Ross Pearsall continues his uninterrupted string of genius Super-Team Family Presents... comics book cover ideas with the long overdue pairing of both DC and Marvel's gold-shirted, high-collard, nigh-invulnerable heroes for hire (and their best buds) at braveandboldlost.blogspot.com/:

Something tells me that the hijinks of Booster Gold and Blue Beetle would get on the combined last nerve of Power Man and Iron Fist, so a little inter-team fisticuffs are probably in the cards here.

Thanks for all your continued hard work, Ross.

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A recent issue of Ross Pearsall's long-running series of Super-Team Family team-up books featured a new adventure of "Robo Force," the team of robots that includes Skeets as a member!

Looking through the archives at braveandboldlost.blogspot.com, I realized I had missed a previous Robo Force cover with Skeets:

If Skeets can't save the day, it's a very bad day indeed.

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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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Unless you're planning on picking up the new DCeased boxed set collection (of previously released trades), don't expect to see Booster Gold in any DC Comics this week. At least not in your Local Comic Shop.

However, Booster does appear on the cover of a recent issue of Ross Pearsall's Super-Team Family Presents... at braveandboldlost.blogspot.com:

There's a lot to like about this potential crossover. In addition to the fact that both Booster Gold and Phillip J. Fry are temporally-displaced persons with robot sidekicks, Futurama has never shied away from criticizing the sort of runaway commercialism that Booster Gold often represents.

And, of course, that pic of Booster comes from 2008's Legion of Super-Heroes in the 31st-Century #19, and Futurama is set in... you guessed it... the 31st century.

Yeah, I'd definitely buy that comic. I might even be willing to pay quite a bit more than 60¢.

UPDATE 2023-10-17: Booster booster Marty writes in to let us know that a picture of Booster does appear in Batman Superman World's Finest #20. So buy that and make Skeets happy!

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Longtime Booster booster Morgenstern recently asked me a very good question:

Did you ever write an article about this dropped idea of making Tim Drake Blue Beetle and the Death of Booster Gold by Scott Beatty & Chuck Dixon?

The answer is "no." And I'll correct that oversight right now.

Before I can explain, let me set the stage. The early 2000s were a lean time for Booster Gold. He made exactly two in-continuity, non-flashback appearances in 2001, both in very small parts (just a few panels) as set dressing for the "Our Worlds at War" and "Joker's Last Laugh" crossover events. Although Booster was still friends with Ted Kord, the Blue Beetle was finding much greater success as an associate of Oracle's Birds of Prey. That's where this story begins.

In Birds of Prey #39 (released in January 2002), Ted Kord is diagnosed with a heart condition that forces him to hang up his tights. However,Birds of Prey and Robin writer Chuck Dixon and his "Joker: Last Laugh" co-collaborator Scott Beatty didn't intend this to be the end of the Blue Beetle, just an opportunity for a passing of the mantle.

The plan, as Beatty revealed on his blog in a 2019 post titled "THE CLIP FILE: How Scott Beatty & Chuck Dixon *ALMOST* Turned Robin Into BLUE BEETLE!," was that "a gravely injured Ted Kord would find a replacement Blue Beetle while he convalesced... assuming that he would survive at all. It would be a *paid* position occupied by a cash-strapped Tim Drake (a.k.a. Robin III)." Christopher Irving's 2007 encyclopedic The Blue Beetle Companion confirms the plan, quoting Dixon as elaborating that eventually "an invalid Ted Kord would direct a half dozen Blue Beetles (all with different talents) to battle international crime."

What makes all of this relevant to Booster Gold fans is exactly how Beatty and Dixon intended to launch this enterprise in the pages of a proposed mini-series they called Blue Beetles. Quoting from the mini-series pitch proposal on Beatty's blog:

We throw down the gauntlet with the death of Booster Gold.

Really.

With ground-support from Ted, Danny and Star begin an investigation into the events surrounding Booster Gold's demise, a mystery which provides the backbone to the first few issues. Their trial-by-fire begins as Ted launches an ambitious campaign to reel in any Beetle foes still at-large, sending his apprentice Beetles to capture a string of rogues and offer them clemency if they swear to renounce villainy; otherwise it's a one-way ticket to the Slab. And now that it's tucked away in polar isolation at the bottom of the world, NOBODY wants to go to the Slab.

Meanwhile, Booster is celebrated on the evening news, showered in fifteen minutes of celebrity as unofficial biographies are published, how-to videos are hawked, and the promotional machine grinds dollars out of heroic sacrifice.

The kicker is this: Booster's death was faked by Maxwell Lord in order to capitalize on the cult of celebrity surrounding young stars dying young and leaving beautiful corpses. Lord plans on marketing the Booster Gold bio and telepic, then engineering a ballyhooed superhero resurrection.

Booster and Max are in cahoots, hoping to spike interest in the hero's eventual resurrection and subsequent product endorsement deals. What's worse, both Booster and Max were willing to silence Ted Kord in order to maintain the ruse.

That's... just.... Wow.

Although this particular pitch was denied by the Powers-That-Be at DC at the time for unspecified reasons — and I can't say I'm too saddened by that particular decision — it's amazing to see how many of these ideas presage what would actually unfold in the hands of other writers. Remember, this was 2002. Max's villain turn in Countdown to Infinite Crisis was still three years away, and Booster's death would be a key component of Infinite Crisis-follow up 52!

For more information on this particular footnote of DC history, I encourage you to read Beatty's full proposal for Blue Beetles on his blog, scottbeatty.blogspot.com.

Thanks for helping me correct my oversight, M.

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