As pointed out to me by Rob Snow, New York Comic Con and Metaverse Comics has released a 45-minute long video interview with Blue and Gold creators Dan Jurgens and Ryan Sook to promote the upcoming series.

The creators talk about what kind of story it will be, whether or not new fans will have any idea what's going on, and which of them feels more like Booster and which feels more like Beetle. (Spoiler Alert! It's exactly the ones you expect.) They even screenshare some artwork and script plans. I'd say it's worth a listen for die-hard Booster boosters.

If the above embed doesn't work for you, you can find the video at Facebook.com or FindTheMetaverse.com.

Thanks, Rob, Jurgens, and Ryan (and interviewer Mike Negin)! Blue and Gold is set for a late July release.

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As all Booster boosters know by now, DC has announced a new Blue Beetle/Booster Gold mini-series coming in July 2021. What you may not know is just how long it has taken to get to this blessed event. What follows is the third in a series of three posts that originally appeared here on Boosterrific in June 2011:

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After reading an interview in 1988's Direct Currents #8 with Dan Jurgens and searching through the letter columns in early-1990s Justice League America comics (part 1 and part 2 of this series, respectively), I decided that it was time to go straight to the original source and ask Dan Jurgens about the fate of The Blue and the Gold series that he was once so excited about.

BOOSTERRIFIC: Looking back, I came across a copy of DC's DIRECT CURRENTS promotional flier which featured an interview with you in it's "People at Work" segment (DIRECT CURRENTS #8, August 1988). In that interview -- interviewer unknown, though Paul Kupperberg gets writing credit -- largely promoting your work on FLASH GORDON), you mentioned an upcoming project:

"And, of course, the one project I'm really excited about is something that DC's still got in the planning stages, called THE BLUE AND THE GOLD, a new series starring Booster Gold with the Blue Beetle. They've gotten real popular as buddies in Justice League International, so I think a book co-starring the two of them is a natural. It's going to have that unique JLI flavor to it."

Clearly that book never materialized. Do you remember anything about this planned series, such as how far into development it might have gotten or what finally prevented its publication?

DAN JURGENS: Yes, that was definitely on the board a couple of different times. There were, I think, three different times when we were just about to start working on it and then something would come up that prevented us from doing so. Generally, I think it was my overall workload, or an idea to hold it off for another event or something like that. I think there were even some points where we were going to try to tie in with a specific JL event, and then I got too busy to do so.

It's odd, because it was everyone's intention-- DC included, to actually get it done.

BOOSTERRIFIC: You state that the delays may have been cause by your workload. Was this book -- presumably an ongoing -- your idea, or did an editor at DC assign you this project? Did DC never consider handing the project off to another writer/artist?

DAN JURGENS: It's impossible for me to answer the question of what DC might have considered, but I don't remember any discussions of another creative team. We did play around with the idea of someone else writing the book-- Mike Carlin-- for awhile, which would have been a lot of fun. We probably thought of it more as a mini-series because that was a good way to introduce a book at the time.

But I was really, really busy with a lot of stuff-- and any window I had to fit it in seemed to open and close in a hurry.

BOOSTERRIFIC: During the several years where there was a possibility this thing would go to market, was any actual work -- scripts or art -- done, or did it never make it out of the planning stages?

DAN JURGENS: No scripts or art were ever done. Lots of conversations and ideas and we got as close as thinking we'd be starting in the next three or four weeks, but something always came up. I couldn't tell you what each of those events might have been, however.

Comics were like that then. In terms of planning, things were a bit more loose than they are now. We'd often have those, "let's do this!" types of conversations that would sometimes become a reality, other times not. There have been several times when I was part of a project that I truly thought would happen, but for whatever reason didn't. Or would kind of morph into something else.

BOOSTERRIFIC: I was surprised to see you mention this project in 1988. For awhile it was promoted in the letter column of the Giffen/DeMatteis JLI. You may not remember, but I would be interested to know at what point you recall this project being finally cancelled (or at least so far on the back burner that no one discussed it anymore)? Was the window of opportunity closed for this project by the time you took over as JLI scribe in 1992 (at which point you wrote/drew Booster and Beetle monthly)?

DAN JURGENS: The project wasn't ever cancelled, so much as it simply didn't happen. If there's no true, official start, you can't cancel it after all. We had the best of intentions but it just didn't materialize.

I do think that by the time I took on JLA that we sort of saw that as a Blue and Gold vehicle, especially since it was such a good opportunity to tie the book into the "Death of Superman" story.

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So that's that; the story of The Blue and Gold series that almost was. Boosterrific.com offers a hearty thank you to Dan Jurgens for his time and generosity in indulging us with an interview about a comic book he never worked on... until now. 😉

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You may recall that this time last week, I asked whether the "Linearverse" introduced in Generations Shattered and Generations Forged should count as continuity. That question got answered (in a roundabout way) when earlier this week Russ Burlingame took a break from writing books about movies to interview Generations writers Dan Jurgens, Robert Venditti, and Andy Schmidt in a spiritual successor to his old "Gold Exchange" column for ComicBook.com.

ComicBook: The idea that realities have always been there, just out of sight, rather than actually being destroyed, is a revelation to the characters here -- but is that how you view the worlds that are destroyed in each subsequent Crisis event? Certainly it's how The CW explicitly dealt with their post-Crisis multiverse.

Dan Jurgens: I hadn't thought about it that way, but I certainly see your point!

For me, on a personal level, I find it harder to accept the notion of entire planes of reality being destroyed, only to be recreated again. "Hiding" them or making them inaccessible actually seems much more believable. The amount of energy required to destroy and recreate universes is tremendous, after all.

Plus, we weren't going to change anything. The Linearverse was meant to stay much the way it had been, which is a place that is belt around DC's published history.

Robert Venditti: To steal from Dan a bit, I hadn't really thought of that. I don't know if it's important to me that definitive explanations are made. Mostly, I want to leave toys in the sandbox for other creative teams to play with. I think we've done that.

Andy Schmidt: One of the things that I generally want to shy away from as a creator is writing over someone else's work or saying that it never happened. Because it happened for the reader and for the creators who put those stories together. They're real and they're important to someone.

Most of the comics I grew up reading that got me into comics in the first place have been retconned so they never happened, but they're still what made me fans of those characters in the first place. So, for me, it's just kind of a respect thing for fans and creators both. If it's real to you — I should treat it as such. Generations Shattered and Forged gave us a platform to re-validate those "hidden" stories as you called them. To let readers and creators know we remember, and we still love those stories, while also crafting something new to introduce those takes on characters to new fans. It's challenging and it's fun and I think it's upbeat in the approach and hopefully in its execution.

I like the "it is what you want it to be" approach to the DC Universe — which in the past has made such titles as Formerly Known As The Justice League possible — so I'll choose to consider the story canon. Thanks, guys! I think I'm going to like this Linearverse.

Elsewhere in the interview, the creators also talk about why they chose the characters they chose to include in the story, as well as the long shadow Zero Hour cast on Generations. I recommend you read the whole article yourself at ComicBook.com.

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This past Friday, Kat Calamia interviewed writer Joshua Williamson for the ghost of Newsarama at GamesRadar.com. Williamson is the brains behind Infinite Frontier #0, the issue launching the post-Death Metal DCU.

There's actually a lot of useful information in the interview to those curious about where the DCU is headed, but the important part for Booster boosters is this exchange:

Newsarama: There are a ton of characters that appear on the main cover. Some characters that stand out, in particular, are President Superman, Alan Scott, Jade, Obsidian, and Blue Beetle. You mentioned James is writing an Alan Scott-centered chapter of Infinite Frontier #0. Do the others I mentioned have a role in Infinite Frontier, and/or the DCU going forward?

Williamson: Blue Beetle only has a very small scene in this, but that's partially because of him having a role in something else later on in the year. Like we wanted the cover to represent not just this one issue, but also some of the stuff that's coming in DC for 2021 and because of Blue Beetle and Booster Gold and some of their roles later is why we put them on the cover.

Be still my beating heart! DC has only been promising us a Blue and Gold team-up book since at least the letter column of Justice League International #25 in April 1989! Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me for 30 years... well, what's another year going to hurt?

Maybe 2021 is finally our lucky year!

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In the comments of my blog post about the single greatest Booster Gold comic ever written (Justice League #4), there was some discussion about when exactly Booster's comic book portrayals turned from fun-loving but competent crime fighter (as portrayed in his own original series) to bumbling moron (as portrayed in 52 and just about everywhere since).

The timing of that change can be narrowed to shortly after the dawn of the 21st-century. No so coincidentally, that's about the same time that Blue Beetle's character also got an overhaul before coming to a very gory end.

Blue Beetle, who during the JLI years always played the fool in the original Blue and Gold dynamic, lost his sense of humor for his inclusion in the 1999 L.A.W. (Living Assault Weapons) mini-series reuniting the former Charlton Comics characters. For a few years following, he appeared much more prominently in DC Comics than his best friend, notably in issues of Birds of Prey, where he was diagnosed with a weak heart and semi-retired from heroics. This allowed his more serious demeanor a chance to take root with readers and editors alike.

I'd always assumed that was why, when Beetle and Booster were reunited in 2003's Formerly Known as the Justice League, the comedy roles of the two super buddies were swapped. However, when I put that question to JLI writer J.M. DeMatteis on Twitter last week, he revealed a different reason.

Whatever you think of the change, you have to admit that "just because" is as good a reason as Beetle and Booster ever had for any of their hijinx.

And now you know the rest of the story. (Thanks to Ariel for inspiring this topic.)

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