Over the weekend, Rob Snow wrote in to say

There was an intriguing teaser dropped on Bleeding Cool about Future States Gold Beetle.
Any clue?

Nothing concrete, but I like where your head is, Rob.

The teaser Rob mentions was in the article "91 Rumours, Gossip, Teases About DC Comics Future State for 2021." Number 90 on that list is

Who is... Gold Beetle in Future State?

I wish I knew. DC Comics has had Blue Beetles, Red Beetles, and Black Beetles, so there's no reason to think that Gold Beetle has anything to do with Booster Gold. But it might.

At this point, I should point out that there is no evidence in any of DC's promotional material to date that this Gold Beetle even exists (or will exist), much less that it has anything to do with the future of everyone's favorite comedic crime-fighting team. Adjust your hopes for a previously unannounced Booster Gold appearance in any of the next two months' worth of DC comics accordingly.

Booster's next know appearance is on the cover of Infinite Frontier in March. If anyone spots our hero in any of the Future State comics before then, please let us know.

UPDATE 2021-01-15: Mystery solved! Booster booster Shawn Baston notes that Gold Beetle is on the cover of April's Flash #769. More on that later.

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Quick recap: In early 2021, Booster Gold will be appearing in a two-part mini-series, Generations: Shattered (January 15) and Generations: Forged (February 23). This story will not be related to the "Future State" event DC is publishing over the same period. (More details available in these Boosterrific posts.)

Until now, we've talked only about Shattered, but we're finally starting to get some good information about the second half of the series. Noah Dominguez and CBR.com and Michael Doran at Gamesradar.com have the advanced solicitation text:

GENERATIONS FORGED #1
written by DAN JURGENS, ANDY SCHMIDT, and ROBERT VENDITTI
art by BRYAN HITC, MIKE PERKINS, BERNARD CHANG, PAUL PELLETIER, and others
covers by LIAM SHARP and RAFAEL ALBUQUERQUE

Dispersed through time by the villain Dominus, our ragtag team of generational heroes -- featuring 1939 Batman, Kamandi, Superboy, Steel, Starfire, Sinestro, Booster Gold, and Dr. Light -- must find a way to restore the timeline... and what they ultimately discover is something far, far greater You'll have to read it to believe it as time dies... and generations rise!
ON SALE February 23, 2021

standard cover by Liam Sharp

alternate cover by Rafael Albuquerque

Booster boosters know that our hero's planned origin story relied heavily on Superboy's continuity which was erased from the DC Universe by the original Crisis on Infinite Earths. It will be pretty cool to see the two characters finally interacting.

By the way, if you don't recognize "the villain Dominus," Russ Burlingame has the explainer of this 1990s Superman foe at Comicbook.com.

It's looking like it'll be a very Boosterrific 2021! Hooray!

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If you read Detective Comics #1027 back in September, you might remember its last page:

When I saw that last panel, I thought, "what the heck is Generations: Future State?" The answer wasn't immediately clear because DC was keeping its plans to itself.

We eventually learned that Future State is going to be a two-month alternate-Earth event interrupting whatever it is that passes for continuity in the DC Rebirth Universe. But how would this new title connect to Dan Jurgens' Generations comic which we'd already heard solicited as Generations: Shattered? (Or was Generations: Shattered a different book altogether? How many Generations books were there going to be?)

Despite what we may have guessed, according to Newsarama Senior Editor Chris Arrant, they aren't related at all.

"Originally, we were going to touch on what's coming with Future State," Dan Jurgens, one of Generations' writer/artists told Newsarama. "We're detouring from that a bit to focus more on our own story."

In other words, for readers under the impression that Generations: Future State #1 (as mentioned in Detective Comics #1027) on September 15 and Generations: Shattered #1 announced by DC on September 9 are two distinct projects, they are not. They are one and the same. The one-shot was renamed from 'Future State #1' to 'Shattered #1' sometimes in between its September 9 announcement and whenever Detective Comics #1027 went to the printers prior to that. DC has also seemingly made the editorial decision to remove any story connection between Generations and Shattered.

The 'Generations' story will play out next in January 5's Generations: Shattered, and then continue in February with Generations: Forged.

Whew, 2020 has been a mess, hasn't it? Thanks to Newsarama for finally setting that record straight and untangling all those names and projects. (I recommend that you read the full article at at Gamesradar.com for all the details.)

Personally, I'm glad that the two events are unlinked. Future State sounds like it's going to be a lot, and I still suffer a little PTSD from trying to keep up with all those Convergence mini-series back in 2015.

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Over at Newsarama/GamesRadar+, Michael Doran has started speculating about what DC might have in mind for January/February 2021 in regards to the mysterious "Generations" event teased in Detective Comics #1027.

I don't agree with all of Doran's theories, and he altogether avoids guessing how we'll reconcile getting both the original 1985 Booster Gold (seen on the solicited Generations: Shattered cover) and the 2007 time cop Booster Gold (hinted at in the dialogue of Detective Comics #1027) in one event. But his general conclusion seems reasonable enough. I quote:

In summary, 'Future State' won't be a precursor to a reboot (which DC really wants you to know isn't happening), but a lead-in to coordinated refresh/line-wide jumping on point the publisher can market heavily without alienating existing readers and throwing the continuity baby out with the bathwater as it did with 'The New 52.'

Not a reboot but a "refresh"? Sure, okay. Whatever. I don't have any problem with that. I didn't have any problem with that when DC tried it with Convergence or 52 or Zero Hour or any of the many, many other non-reboot reboots DC has attempted over the past four decades or so. If you read superhero comics long enough, you'll get used to publishers trying new initiatives to bring in new blood, which they should. Children are the future, after all.

(Trivial digression: We didn't call Crisis on Infinite Earths a "reboot" back in the day, either. Interestingly, Google and Wikipedia sources credit the term "reboot" in its modern, "continuity reset" meaning to fan discussion of Mark Waid's 1994 re-imagining of Legion of Super-Heroes continuity in the wake of Zero Hour, which was itself the second major overhaul of LSH continuity. Those fans were computer-savvy users of the World Wide Web-precursor Usenet, so the adoption and retasking of the computer term came naturally. Therefore, DC's own history of recreating their properties over and over again was the reason the term was created in the first place. You brought this upon yourself, DC!)

To make your own informed guesses about what the future might hold (and get a glimpse of the issue's alternate cover, which also includes Booster Gold!), you can read the whole article at gamesradar.com.

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Last week, I mentioned as one of the reasons that I still liked single-issue floppies was in large part because I love the cover art. That conditioning led me to do something yesterday that I almost never do: I paid far more than cover price just to buy a variant cover, and it doesn't have anything to do with Booster Gold.

Can... not... resist....

See that price tag? The last time I spent $40 on a comic book, I got the second best Booster Gold trade collection ever printed. And the time before that, I got the best Booster Gold trade collection ever printed.

As satisfied as I am to have an Art Adams-drawn Captain Carrot cover (and I consider $40 a small price to pay against the amount I would have paid over the past 3 decades if DC had chosen to give me any ongoing Zoo Crew comics), I do have to admit that the Booster Gold trades were money better spent.

You can still get both Booster Gold: The Big Fall and Booster Gold: Future Lost at Amazon.com (and maybe a Local Comic Shop near you).

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