Not surprisingly, since DC canceled his title, Booster Gold news has been a little slow. These are some actual links returned in this week's Google News search for "Booster Gold":

• Dementia Care Booster Call [staffnurse.com]
  Hospitals caring for patients with dementia were urged today to take 'urgent' action to improve the quality of their treatment.... "This new commitment has the power to make the gold standard we know exists in many hospitals the norm."
  

• Former Atlanta Braves Star Sid Bream Putting Honey Where His Mouth Is [thepostgame.com]
  "It's an all-natural energy booster," he says.... To stay in shape, he walks four to five miles several times a week, and he fuels up with a spoonful of the liquid gold, usually spread on whole grain flatbread with bananas.

• ROWVA Band Boosters selling discount cards [galesburg.com]
  The ROWVA Band Booster Club is sponsoring its 3rd annual Gold Value Discount Card sale, according to Derrick Appell, club vice president and fundraiser chairman.

• Bloomington school to sell American Indian statue [chron.com]
  Bloomington High School plans to auction its life-size statue of an American Indian at a booster club event on Oct. 1, principal Tim Moore told The Pantagraph newspaper.... The statue carries a shield and wears shoes and other items in purple and gold, the school's colors.

Booster Gold is still out there. You just have to know where to look for him.

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When Charlton Comics updated their Blue Beetle character for the Marvel Age in the mid sixties, they made sure to link the continuity of the character to his predecessor who had been published since 1939. When DC purchased the Charlton stable of characters in the 1980s, they maintained that history when introducing the characters to their new, post-Crisis on Infinite Earths continuity. When DC created a new successor to the Blue Beetle in 2006, they again carefully maintained the link to the past, ensuring that the Blue Beetle would be among the premier of their so-called "legacy" characters, with a publication history of nearly 70 years.

Yesterday, DC published their latest incarnation of the Blue Beetle. Gone is any suggestion that there were previous Blue Beetles on Earth. Gone is the shared history with his predecessors and the world revealed through their adventures. Is this approach a foolish abandonment of the history that has earned the character nearly 70 years of publishing history, or is it a wise jettisoning of dead weight that is keeping the new Blue Beetle character from being accepted by a modern mass audience?

What makes this issue relevant to Boosterrific.com is the fact that the reboot seems to divorce the Blue Beetle from Booster Gold. Once upon a time, DC depended on the duo to sell comics. Even when the 2006 Beetle was relaunched, Booster Gold was the familiar tool used to introduce him to a skeptical audience. For 20 years, the characters of Booster Gold and Blue Beetle have been as inseparable as Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy or Bud Abbott and Lou Costello among their legion of fans. Now the two characters are more comparable to Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, once arguably America's most popular comedy duo before circumstances drove them apart. While each would continue to be a star in his own right, the shadow of their shared past could never forgotten by their fans, new or old.

So is it in the best interest of DC Comics to recreate the character of Blue Beetle with no shared connection to Booster Gold? Time will tell. Perhaps in the future, DC will reunite the two characters for more shared hijinks. Or maybe future audiences will come to accept that one character be mentioned without the other. But right now, it sure seems like there's something missing.

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Amid the new DC rollout continuing with 12 all-new titles today, DC will also release some old Justice League of America comics in the form of the Justice League of America: Omega collection. This trade will include a reprint of Starman/Congorilla, which includes a brief Booster Gold cameo appearance. Beware: despite being named "Omega," this trade doesn't actually collect the end of the pre-rebooted Justice League of America series. That, presumably, will happen later (and will also include a Booster Gold cameo appearance). Whether or not buying this will make Skeets happy is unknown at this time.

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With the cancellation of Booster Gold comes the cancellation of Russ Burligame's monthly "Gold Exchange" column at Comic Related interviewing the series creators. Fortunately, like the phoenix rising from the ashes of the DCU, Burlingame now presents us with the "International Exchange" column at The Outhouse. New site, new name, new series; same old Dan Jurgens. Isn't it nice to know that some things don't change?

IX: The comment about the basement-dwellers is kind of begging for a response, isn't it? I know some people on the Internet seem to have gotten their nose bent out of shape over the comment, but I read it as Briggs being the devil's advocate and Booster speaking your position for you. Did I misunderstand?

J: You didn't misunderstand at all. I wrote that line right around the time that DC's plans had become public. I'm always fascinated by a response from people who claim to despise product before they've seen it or really know anything about it.

Do I understand fans having a tremendous allegiance to a previous universe and timeline? Of course. Hell, I wrote a lot of that so I have a fondness for it as well.

However, I think it's still fair to ask them to be a bit openminded and receptive about what we're trying to do.

So Briggs' comment address a very, very small group that reacted in that way. Frankly, it's good to have a sense of humor about some of this and read it with that in mind.

So Jurgens was talking to me! There's plenty in the full interview to indicate that so far as Jurgens is concerned, little has changed for Booster Gold in the DCnU.

You can find the full article here. You might want to bookmark it, as Justice League International and therefore the "International Exchange" will be around for years to come.

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Football season is now well underway, and naturally during the football season, thoughts turn to the greatest quarterback of all time: Booster Gold. At least, he should have been, if it hadn't been for a few bad decisions.

In the year 2462, Michael "Booster" Carter will be expelled from Gotham University for accepting bribes to intentionally lose football games. This is the cardinal sin in competitive sports: corrupted athletes rigging the outcome of games. However, given recent trends in college sports, how scandalous should this behavior be considered?

In the past year alone, the college quarterback who reportedly was "gifted" thousands of dollars in cars and cash in a violation of college rules was signed to a high-profile professional contract. The college quarterback who admitted accepting "gifts" was given a one-game suspension, a comparative slap on the wrist because at least 12 other players on his team were also guilty. And the Heisman Trophy-winning college quarterback whose father was accused of soliciting payoffs to steer his son to the highest-paying school was rewarded with a multi-million dollar contract in the National Football League.

That's just the tip of the iceberg: systemic scandals have begun plaguing colleges across the country. From Tennessee to California, Oregon to Florida, it seems that every state in the Union is showing the signs of corrupted athletics programs.

In this context, does Booster's crime of taking payments to pay for his mother's surgery still make him such a bad guy? Or was he just unlucky enough to commit his crime in a future of low-tolerance for college sports shenanigans?

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