If you are the sort who pays attention to such things, you already know that Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. debuts tonight on ABC. So far as the glut of advertising would have you believe, it is only the latest, greatest thing to happen to television, like, ever.

What does this have to do with Booster Gold? Simple: it's a television show and Booster Gold is not.

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. entered development in July 2012 when Disney decided to take their successful Marvel movie franchises to the small screen. ABC ordered a pilot of the show in August 2012. The show was officially selected for broadcast in May 2013 and will be on your TV tonight.

Compare that to Booster Gold, announced in November 2011 following Booster's triumphant television debut in Smallville earlier that year. A script was delivered sometime around December 2012. Two years have passed, and in that time there has been no pilot, no noticeable progress, no news at all. Hollywood studios don't cancel developments; they just ignore something until it goes away.

S.H.I.E.L.D. is not an A-list property, yet it gets a high profile television show while Booster Gold doesn't. This isn't a knock against Booster, and it isn't necessarily a knock against DC. Disney owns Marvel and ABC, so it only makes sense that they spend the money to develop their own properties for their own distribution channels. In the meantime, Arrow has been a success for DC owner TimeWarner, but on a scale much more subdued than what Disney is attempting.

Recent years have been full of failed DC Comics television productions, including such high-profile characters Aquaman and Wonder Woman. Does TimeWarner not care about turning the DC stable of characters into live-action television shows? Who knows. The only thing we know for sure is that they certainly don't care about producing Booster Gold.

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