Just a few months after Dan Jurgens teased the impending release of The Blue and the Gold in August 1988's Direct Currents #8 (as posted in yesterday's blog post), the news was confirmed in the Justice Log letter column of Justice League International #25 (April 1989).

These letter column responses are presumably written by series editor, Andy Helfer, or more likely his assistant, Kevin Dooley. They should be in position to know the accuracy of the following news they printed a few months later in Justice League America #32 (November 1989).

I don't know where the news of the new publication date was was released first, but it doesn't much seem to matter. That "semi-regular" series hint seems to suggest that by this time, DC had decided that the ideas behind The Blue and the Gold series had been rolled into what eventually became Justice League Quarterly at the end of 1990. More news about The Blue and the Gold series wouldn't appear until writer/artist Dan Jurgens and editor Brian Augustyn took over the series in 1992. The news wasn't good, but at least it was honest. From Justice League America #64 (July 1992):

Jurgens was the go-to man for many of DC's major event series in the early- to mid-1990s, and his schedule was always full. Worse, just a few issues later, Booster would be powerless, and Beetle would be in his second coma, both thanks to Doomsday. Months passed before both were back in fighting condition, and this storyline seems to preclude the opportunity for a spin-off mini-series focusing on the pair. The letter column for Justice League America #71 (February 1993) seems to confirm this being the end of the road for the long-planned series. This is the last mention of The Blue and Gold in the series.

Five years after Dan Jurgens called it "the one project I'm really excited about," The Blue and the Gold looked like another missed opportunity. To be sure that I had the whole story, I went to the source. Tomorrow here on the Boosterrific Blog: my Q&A with Dan Jurgens about the fate of The Blue and the Gold series.

Comments (3) | Add a Comment | Tags: andy helfer blue and gold blue beetle brian augustyn dan jurgens justice league kevin dooley

In Boosterrific.com's never-ending quest to catalog every Booster Gold appearance in a DC publication, I recently perused several issues of DC's pre-Previews solicitations, Direct Currents. Many of the early issues include interviews with DC artists. The artist interviewed for the "People At Work" column in issue #8 (August, 1988) is Dan Jurgens.

The article -- presumably written by Paul Kupperberg -- includes a brief biography, including the facts that Jurgens was inspired to read comics by the 1966 Batman television show, and that his first work for DC on Warlord resulted from a chance meeting with Mike Grell at a comic book convention. It even contains a bit about the origin of Booster Gold. But the part I found most interesting was this paragraph:

"Then there's next year's ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN ANNUAL, which I'm co-writing with Jerry Ordway and pencilling. 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."

We know it was never released, but how close did DC come to publishing The Blue and the Gold series teaming Booster Gold and Blue Beetle?

It's worth noting that there was no Adventures of Superman Annual released in 1989, and that no Adventures of Superman Annual shares writing credit between Dan Jurgens and Jerry Ordway (though both contributed to Action Comics Annual in 1989 and several issues of Adventures of Superman). So it seems that DC was being very flexible with their schedule in the late 1980s.

Clearly, this requires a little more research. Tomorrow we'll look for clues in Justice League letter columns from the 1990s.

Comments (2) | Add a Comment | Tags: blue and gold blue beetle dan jurgens direct currents

Since Shawn posted in Friday's comments that the Dan Jurgens JLA poster appeared in the Pauly Shore "classic" Son in Law, I devoted several hours to tracking down the movie and watching it for the first time. It was time well spent.

There are a couple of scenes about 30 minutes into the movie that take place in a teen-aged boy's bedroom. On the wall of the room are posters of John Stewart as Green Lantern, Lobo, the JLI and (gasp!) the X-Men. In case you can't tell, that gold and blue blob at the top of the screen to the right of Pauly Shore's temple is Booster Gold. I suppose if Son in Law is good enough to be the first movie role for Tiffani-Amber Thiessen, it's good enough for Booster Gold's first movie appearance as well.

(On a side note, I found the movie oddly endearing. Sure, it's stupid, formulaic and occasionally insulting, but it's also kind of charming. Just don't tell anybody I said that.)

Comments (3) | Add a Comment | Tags: movies poster son in law

Big thanks to Jesster, who provided photos of not one, but two different Booster Gold posters from the 80s and 90s!

It was a solicitation for the 1992 Dan Jurgens poster above that triggered my post on Friday. Little did I know that DC had only a few years earlier released a poster promoting a different version of the Justice League by Kevin Maguire. Fortunately, Jesster had that "Class of 1987" poster, too.

Boosterrific.com, now even more complete thanks to Jesster.

Comments (0) | Add a Comment | Tags: dan jurgens jesster justice league justice league international kevin maguire poster

Looking back through some old copies of the DC newsletter, Direct Currents, I re-discovered the original solicitation for the following poster by Dan Jurgens and Rick Burchett.

The poster was solicited to promote the first 1990s overhaul of the Justice League in Justice League Spectacular. The 22" x 28" poster carried a suggested retail price of $5.95. (That's the cost of 2 comic books in 2010! What a bargain!)

Does anyone have a copy of this poster in color? Was it ever released? If you have, please let Boosterrific know.

Comments (6) | Add a Comment | Tags: dan jurgens poster rick burchett