We might be loyal to our Carter clan, but we still have some lingering animosity about the reboot, don't we?

Last week's poll question: So far as you are concerned, are Booster Gold and Blue Beetle friends or lovers? (41 votes)

I suspect that you knew after Tuesday that this next question was coming. Note that I'm not asking whether Blue and Gold are actually a couple, just whether you think of them as a couple. (It's an audience poll, not a quiz!)

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Over at Yahoo! Answers, Rachel has asked a very important question:

"How close are Booster Gold and Blue Beetle really?"

Micheal Jon Carter ("Booster Gold") and Ted Kord ("Blue Beetle") have over the past 25 years been teammates, rivals, and business partners, but most significantly friends. Both share the tragic loss of significant business fortunes. Booster supported Beetle through his battle with obesity and nursed him through a coma. Beetle stood up for Booster time and again against criticism of Booster's motives and maturity. Each is everything that the other could ask for in a friend.

Yes, of course they're friends. But what Rachel is really asking is whether Booster Gold and Blue Beetle are lovers.

Comic book readers recognize the pair from years of Justice League International adventures. Internet readers, however, are probably more familiar with the duo as the two-halves of the portmanteau "Boostle," or a very particular sub-genre of romantic fan fiction (itself called "slash fiction") portraying the friends as homosexual lovers.

Here at Boosterrific.com, I try to avoid the Boostle phenomenon. While I have nothing against fan fiction, and I whole-heartedly support anything that would bring Booster Gold to a larger audience, Boosterrific.com is a chronicle of the adventures of a character owned and published by DC Comics. And in DC Comics' comics, Booster Gold and Blue Beetle are most certainly not romantically entwined.

I've wondered from time to time if I'm doing Booster Gold fandom a disservice by ignoring the Boostle community. I justify my decision by saying that even a site striving to be as all-encompassing as Boosterrific.com has to draw the line somewhere. Certainly, the Boostle-ers don't need this site to have their fun.

Therefore, Rachel, to answer your question, until such time as DC Comics officially sanctions a romantic relationship between Blue and Gold by including it in their published canon, Booster Gold and Blue Beetle are really just friends so far as Boosterrific.com is concerned. Really, really good friends.

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Last week, Comics Alliance ran an article by Chris Sims about which comic book characters from DC and Marvel would be the most fun to party with. (Booster Gold and Blue Beetle score 3 out of 10 party hats.) While I thought that was news enough to post in and of itself, trying to rediscover that link to post here today accidentally led me to discover Boostle, a Live Journal blog devoted to all things Blue and Gold. A website devoted to Booster Gold? What a great idea!

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