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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I've already covered Booster Gold's appearance in the upcoming Generations Forged (due February 23), but that's not the only BG appearance included in DC's February solicitation as provided by GamesRadar.com.

First up is the collected edition of Booster's recent guest-starring role in Batman Beyond #47, #48, and #49:

BATMAN BEYOND VOL. 8: THE ERADICATION AGENDA TP
written by DAN JURGENS art by SEAN CHEN, SEAN PARSON, PAUL PELLETIER, and NORM RAPMUND
In the final volume of Batman Beyond, Batman and Batman Beyond meet at least, with Booster Gold caught in the middle! But first, Terry McGinnis forges an uneasy alliance with Damian Wayne in order to stop Mr. Zero and his radical faction from turning Gotham City into an ice-covered hellscape. To set things right, Batman, Damian, and Batwoman Beyond must declare war on the League of Assassins! And one more thing: Inque returns, posing as Batman and wreaking havoc in Gotham City! Collects Batman Beyond #43-50.
On sale March 16, 2021

But that's not all!

FLASHPOINT: THE 10TH ANNIVERSARY OMNIBUS HC
written by GEOFF JOHNS, SCOTT SNYDER, JEFF LEMIRE, JAMES ROBINSON, BRIAN AZZARELLO, DAN JURGENS, PETER MILLIGAN, JIMMY PALMIOTTI, ADAM GLASS, DAN ABNETT, and others art by ANDY KUBERT, FRANCIS MANAPUL, DAN JURGENS, EDUARDO RISSO, MIKEL JANíN, BEN OLIVER, SCOTT KOLINS, RAGS MORALES, and others The event that reshaped the DC Universe, now collected in its entirety in one massive omnibus edition! Barry Allen works for the Central City Police Department, where he's solved numerous criminal cases. As the Flash, he protects the innocent and battles evil. He is the Fastest Man Alive! Or he was...
Barry Allen wakes up to a world that is not his own. A place where his mother was never killed...and the Flash never existed. This altered universe is on the brink of a cataclysmic war. No human has ever wielded the Green Lantern's light, and no one has ever heard of Superman. Batman has as much blood on his hands as his enemies do, and America's last hope is Cyborg. Powerless and alone, Barry Allen desperately tries to hold on to his memories of the reality that once was. If there is any hope of setting things right, he must convince this world's strange, dangerous heroes to help him fix what was broken.
This omnibus collects Flashpoint #1-5, Booster Gold #44-47, The Flash #9-12, Flashpoint: Reverse-Flash #1, Flashpoint: Abin Sur the Green Lantern #1-3, Flashpoint: Emperor Aquaman #1-3, Flashpoint: Batman Knight of Vengeance #1-3, Flashpoint: Citizen Cold #1-3, Flashpoint: The World of Flashpoint #1-3, Flashpoint: Deadman and the Flying Graysons #1-3, Flashpoint: Deathstroke and the Curse of the Ravager #1-3, Flashpoint: Lois Lane and the Resistance #1-3, Flashpoint: The Outsider #1-3, Flashpoint: Secret Seven #1-3, Flashpoint: The Canterbury Cricket #1, Flashpoint: Wonder Woman and the Furies #1-3, Flashpoint: Kid Flash Lost #1-3, Flashpoint: Project Superman #1-3, Flashpoint: Frankenstein and the Creatures of the Unknown #1-3, Flashpoint: Green Arrow Industries #1, Flashpoint: Grodd of War #1, Flashpoint: Hal Jordan #1-3, Flashpoint: The Legion of Doom #1-3.
On sale April 20, 2021 | $150.00 | 1,504 PAGES

Whew! That's a lot of comics in one book. I recommend reading it at a table. If you try to read it in your lap, you might lose circulation in your legs.

And, since we were very recently on the subject, I should mention that BleedingCool.com has uncovered that a new edition of Bizarro Comics is coming in the summer:

BIZARRO COMICS THE DELUXE EDITION
Comic icons come together to tell the strange and wonderful tales of BIZARRO! The tales of Superman's twisted doppelganger, BIZARRO, are collected in this brilliant deluxe edition format! Follow along as Bizarro decides to publish his own comics from BIZARRO COMICS HC #1 and through the strange and wonderful tales told in BIZARRO WORLD!
On sale June 22, 2021

(Bleeding Cool also alerts us to an upcoming 10th Anniversary collection for the New 52 relaunch due in August, but so far it looks like it will just be a select few titles and will not include Booster Gold's Justice League International. I'll be sure to let you know if that changes.)

Obviously none of those are new Booster Gold appearances, but I'm sure many of these books will introduce Booster to new audiences, and that's a good thing, too.

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On October 7, 2019, I wrote (based on news from HollywoodReporter.com):

"DC finally plans to release their comprehensive Rebirth continuity in 2020. That's a mere 9 years after they threw out decades of character development in a bid to boost sales."

Well, guess what DC's plans are for 2021?

"It now appears as though DC's comic book line could be abandoning the idea of a single, shared continuity in favor of a multiverse / metaverse / omniverse model in which each individual comic will have its own story to tell, without much concern for what's going on in other titles across the publishing line."

So says Russ Burlingame at ComicBook.com. This merry-go-round is starting to make me dizzy.

Burlingame's report is based on a post from BleedingCool.com, which qualifies DC's plan thusly:

But what the DC Omniverse will mean is greater creative freedom, less interference by editors (or publishers), and no one saying "you can't use that character, they died in City of Bane/got lost in a Dark Dimension/went evil and currently approaching Gotham, slowly, with all her plants."

Longtime readers of Boosterrific.com know that I consider "continuity" to be a synonym for "character development." If DC fractures their Universe into an Omniverse, instead of having one dynamically developing Booster Gold character with a single continuity threading through many stories, there will be an infinite number of Booster Golds, each with his own continuity of appearances. That doesn't sound very simple to me. Unless they intend for there to be one static Booster Gold character who never learns anything or does anything new. I can't wait to spend money monthly on that.

But this plan would save DC Comics the cost of paying salaries to all those editors. I wonder how much longer until they can get robots to draw the panels?

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Late last week, Newsaradar finally shed a little light on what we should expect from the upcoming Future State event in an interview with Dark Nights: Death Metals writer Scott Snyder, who says

Death Metal ends in January, and then January and February is Future State, which is going to give glimpses of possible DC futures. That was built while we were doing Death Metal to lead into some stuff which isn't happening anymore, but those plans have taken a new shape, which is exciting.

The article authors, Michael Doran and Kat Calamia, speculate that the "stuff which isn't happening anymore" is more than likely the 5G event promoted by former DC Comics publisher Dan DiDio before he was abruptly fired back in February. It looks to me like Future State is the company trying to salvage the sunk cost of that project in a month-long alternate-continuity event similar to the sort of stories we saw in 2011's Flashpoint and 2015's Convergence. Whether they call it "Future State," "Elseworlds," or "Hypertime," DC loves these things.

I don't know Scott Snyder, so I don't know if his "is exciting" comment is sincere or salesmanship. (Was it not exciting in its original form? "Exciting" like a roller coaster or a car fire?) Whichever the case, so long as Booster Gold is involved and on covers like these, I'm on board.

Generations: Shattered #1 card stock variant cover by Lee Bermejo

You can read the original article at GamesRadar.com.

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On Monday, I wondered if the solicitation for Generations: Shattered meant that Booster Gold was going to make a previously unannounced appearance in yesterday's Detective Comics #1027 anthology.

The answer is yes. Kind of.

Words by Dan Jurgens, art by Kevin Nowlan, Hi-Fi, Andworld Design

First of all: The return of "Buster" Gold, a running joke as old as Booster Gold himself! (See page 2, panel 3 of Booster Gold Volume 1, #1!)

Second of all: Is that Skeets on Kamandi's arm? Kevin Nowlan may be the issue's credited artist, but boy howdy does that look like a Dan Jurgens circa 1992 design.

This story, "Generations: Fractured," has a very Zero Hour feel to it. I'm not sure whether that's intentional or coincidental, as Dan Jurgens did write and draw Zero Hour, after all.

We're told at the end of the story that it will be continued in Generations: Future State #1, but I have no idea what that will be. BleedingCool.com suggests that it is a series (mini- or otherwise) that Dan Jurgens will presumably be writing in 2021. However, on Twitter Jurgens seemed to have a bone to pick with some of Bleeding Cool's reporting, so whatever the truth is here is anyone's guess.

Just let me go on the record saying: Hey, DC, please, please, please publish a series by Dan Jurgens featuring Booster Gold and time shenanigans! I even promise not to complain about the cover price.

UPDATE 2020-09-17: BleedingCool has revealed a teaser poster for Future State coming January and February 2021. Which is slightly more than we knew before.

Looks like we'll see more in DC solicitations next month.

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