Yesterday, DC announced on The Source that Flashpoint #5 and Justice League, Volume 2, #1 will be released at 12:01 AM on August 31. DC encourages you to "check your local comic book store for any special events that may be occurring." So the post-Flashpoint era begins with a yawn.

Locally, the last Wednesday of August has been a school night for decades, and I'm sure we're not the only area. That means the teenage and younger target audience that DC says it wants will be largely excluded from events that start after midnight in many, many locations. Sounds like DC is after a different audience for this launch.

If DC calculates the kids will just be downloading the books anyway, maybe the company hopes that this stunt will appease the rest of us who like going to comic shops. Most of the comic book readers I know have full-time jobs and the schedule to match. Some will be unable to attend, and others that do will be sacrificing sleep to do so, all for a few books most of them will be having their local comic shops pull for them anyway.

Keep in mind that this is no "Death of Superman" event: it's just an early on-sale date for a book that most Americans are going to completely ignore. But DC doesn't have to pay the employees who are going to hang around for those long hours, so what do they care? No, this burden is on the comic shop owners, very few of which would typically be open after midnight on an early Wednesday morning.

All of these facts seem to indicate that this artificial event is designed to fail. I had assumed that DC wanted comic retailers to be able to compete with Comixology.com, but I wouldn't have expected this to be the way they planned to do it.

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What a long, strange trip it's been.

Above is the sales graph for the entire Booster Gold Volume 2 series to date, including the recently sold-out first printing of Booster Gold #44. Even without figuring in the second printing or the digital sales, that's a pretty good bump from Flashpoint tie-in sales.

I'm not going to pretend that I understand how sales bumps from Flashpoint tie-ins are supposed to transfer to entirely new series, but if even a few new readers discover the golden goodness of Booster Gold during this transition, at least some good will come of it.

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Remember 3 weeks ago, when I wrote that mistake-filled blog post about the issue of Booster Gold that tied-into Flashpoint? Well, welcome back. DC appears to have really hit a home run with the Flashpoint event.

DC announced via The Source on Friday that Booster Gold #45 has sold out and would be going back to press in coming weeks. Flashpoint #2 was released a week earlier and also sold out of its initial printing. Does all of this sound familiar? It should, as the exact same scenario happened last month with Booster Gold #44 and Flashpoint #2.

I think I've made my disdain for alternate history stories perfectly clear, but I am going to have to accept that I am in the minority on this. Flashpoint and its tie-ins are doing exceptionally well. No doubt they will make a great springboard for DC's second Explosion or first Heroes Reborn or whatever shenanigans DC is planning to roll out at the Flashpoint conclusion.

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Russ Burlingame's latest "Gold Exchange" column with Dan Jurgens has been posted on Comic Related.com. Among other issues, this month's column insightfully has Jurgens comparing and contrasting the current Flashpoint event with Jurgen's own Tangent line of a decade ago.

GX: In a very general way, what separates Flashpoint from something like Tangent? The creative approach seems to be the same (lots and lots of people working on a universe "led" by a couple of guys) and obviously we've got the "similar-but-not-the-same superheroes" thing. What's the big thing that should make us go "Damn!" and think that, continuity-wise, this is more of a rat's nest than when Kyle Rayner got stuck in the Tangent Universe for a while?

DJ: Tangent was structured around the idea of taking the names of DC characters and completely turning them around, upside down and inside out, in a very different universe. Flashpoint is very much about a timeline that differs from the normal DCU because of altered elements.

A word of warning: before you head over to read the rest of the interview, be sure to read Booster Gold #44. There are definitely spoilers in this week's "Gold Exchange."

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Remember 185 18 months ago, when it became very hard to find the issues of Booster Gold that tied-into Blackest Night? Well, welcome to Flashpoint. Love 'em or hate 'em, nothing sells books like a company-wide crossover.

DC announced via The Source on Friday that Booster Gold #44 has sold out and would be going back to press in coming weeks. Flashpoint #1 was released a week earlier and also sold out of its initial printing. The second printing of Flashpoint #1 is expected to be available on June 15. It is a safe bet that Booster Gold #44, 2nd printing, should be available no later than the following week.

Can't wait that long? May I suggest downloading the book from comixology.com? I'm pretty sure that they haven't yet sold out of pixels. [EDIT: Russ Burlingame points out in the comments below that my math sucks.]

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