con•ti•nū′i•y, n
1. The state or quality of being continuous.
2. a continuous series or succession; unbroken, coherent, whole.

"Continuity." Webster's New Twentieth Century Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged Second Edition, edited by Jean L. McKechnie, Collins World, 1977, pp. 395

It's a good topic for the start of a new year.

Booster Gold being written out of DC's current "All In" era got me thinking about this.

Ever since Justice League International volume 3 #1 in late 2011, I've been chronicling new releases of Booster Gold's adventures as taking place in what I call "New 52 Continuity." That was certainly necessary at the time, as the then-continuity of the mainstream DCU in the wake of changes to history in Flashpoint was, for most characters, very different than what had come before. Since everyone's personality is heavily influenced by their experiences, and the characters in the New 52 could no longer be assumed to have the same experiences as their pre-Flashpoint selves, these characters were, to a significant degree, entirely new people (Alan Scott), even when DC pretended that they were not (Clark Kent).

Then came 2015's Convergence, which proved the New 52 Booster Gold and the post-Crisis on Infinite Earths Booster Gold (who I called "Original Gold" or "OG Booster Gold") really were two distinctly different characters living two distinctly different lives. It was like Barry Allen meeting Jay Garrick in "Flash of Two Worlds!" in 1961's The Flash #123 (arguably the single most important story in DC's history, as it first defined the DC Multiverse).

However, in 2016, Rebirth repaired Flashpoint's broken history, and in the years since, further revisions to reality following Death Metal have made it clearer that the pre- and post-Flashpoint continuities have now been fully merged (Wallace West). So which continuity are we in now?

The longest single gap between Booster Gold in-continuity appearances coincided with the Rebirth era, between Bat-Mite #4 in 2015 and Action Comics #992 in 2018. (The Booster Gold/The Flintstones Special was between those two, but it is set in the "Hanna-Barbera Beyond" universe, and it remains unclear which, if any, continuity that Booster Gold belongs to.) It seems logical in hindsight that Action Comics #992 represents the start of a new era, the first (re)appearance of a Booster Gold with a post-Crisis on Infinite Earths history.

Therefore, I think it's past time to update Boosterrific to recognize the modern era of stories as post-Rebirth continuity. I will retroactively make that change beginning with Action Comics #992.

Hopefully, Booster Gold will return to the DC Universe before it becomes necessary to recognize another fundamental change to its ongoing continuity.

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