I was in the beginning stages of writing another "People in His Neighborhood" Booster Gold supporting character post about Skeets when I got hung up on a single question: Is Skeets sentient?

It's not an easy question to answer. Putting aside the deeper philosophical and metaphysical quandaries of what reality is and whether anything truly has free will, let's focus on the arbitrarily narrow definition of a sentient artificial intelligence as a man-made creature that doesn't merely simulate human behavior but is functionally indistinguishable from a rational being.

This question is really integral to the development of Booster Gold as a heroic character. When Michael Carter stole his first Time Sphere to flee from the 25th century in Booster Gold volume 1, he forced Skeets to come with him. If Skeets is a glorified security camera, then the action was theft. However, if Skeets was a sentient employee, Booster is guilty of kidnapping.

While Booster has usually treated Skeets as a coach and companion — usually referring to it with the masculine pronouns "he"/"him" — it's telling that Booster's twin sister, Michelle, has always treated Skeets like a second-class citizen. If sentient A.I. exists in the 25th century and Michelle's dismissive attitude is common, how is her behavior any different than the racism and sexism that cause so many societal problems of the 20th century? (If Skeets was a sentient machine forced to work as a slave for the Space Museum, would that make Booster a freedom fighter?)

The biggest obstacle to answering the question of Skeets' consciousness is the relatively few solo adventures it has had. Skeets has almost always been seen acting in service to Booster, who characteristically gives very little consideration to his floating "friend." (This shouldn't be considered as evidence against sentience. Selfishness has always been Booster's biggest flaw.) The only time that the reader has ever been given access to Skeet's thoughts were late in the run of Booster Gold volume 2. Those few panels imply that Skeets was gaining a sentience it was previously denied.

Then came the New 52. Convergence Booster Gold revised Skeets' origin. This time, Booster stole Skeets from its well-armed "corporate overlords" via a briefcase. Once again, the question of sentience remains unaddressed. Theft? Kidnapping? Emancipation? The answers remain vague.

Should Skeets be granted rights equal to any other human being, or should it continue to be treated like any other tool in Booster's high-tech arsenal? What do you think?

This week's poll question: Is Skeets a sentient artificial being? Please visit the Boosterrific Polls page to view results for this week's poll.

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Booster booster CDN points our attention to a YouTube video from whatculture.com, where Booster Gold has managed to make his way near the top of another list, this time for comics characters with the best motivations.

Booster Gold starts near the 8:00 minute mark

It seems to me that despite not having his own comic, Booster Gold appears to be pretty well known and much more widely respected these days than in years past. That's probably thanks mostly to his being included prominently in recent Batman and Justice League cartoons in his "Greatest Hero You've Never Heard Of" time policeman persona.

To think that Booster, once a laughingstock and perennial B-lister, will be idolized by the upcoming generation of comics readers... that's pretty cool.

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Newsarama.com reports that Heroes in Crisis #9 will be delayed a week until May 29. They insinuate that this was an editorial decision to coincide the release with that of the much-delayed Doomsday Clock #10. Is Doctor Manhattan now to blame for the events of Heroes in Crisis, too?

(Side note: when reading Tom King's work, I so often feel like I understand what he was trying to say while simultaneously being terribly frustrated by how he has chosen to try to say it. In that vein, Heroes in Crisis could be one of the most irritating stories I've ever bought. King clearly wants to say some real things about a real public health crisis, but his message gets lost in a murder-mystery with a reveal that is impossible to see coming — the story admits that there are literally no clues — and makes the misguided decision to turn a beloved hero into a super villain [re-writing his powers in the process] in a manner that only serves to reinforce the initial public perceptions that King ostensibly wants to break down. Grr.)

Any-way.

Speaking of Heroes in Crisis, you may have noticed that Booster Gold appears only in flashback in issue #8. At least that's what I thought when I first read it. It was only on re-read that I realized that Booster's looming presence is probably foreshadowed (pun intended) in these panels set in the present.

See that big, round shadow? The big shadow. Not the little shadows within that shadow. (Does the Speed Force cast shadows now?) It sure seems to me that big round shadow is the Blue Beetle's Bug airship arriving to witness this pivotal scene.

A recent tweeted by Tom King of the splash page for Issue #9, showcasing the Bug streaking across a breathtaking sunset, looks to confirm my theory.

Art by Clay Mann & Tomeu Morey

Great Caesar's Ghost, that's amazing. My complaints about shadows (and Tom King's style) aside, this series really does have some of the most sublime art ever seen in a mainstream comic book.

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Dan Jurgens recently spoke to Russ Burlingame about the 25th anniversary of the release of Superman/Doomsday: Hunter/Prey. Booster Gold played no role in that series, yet according to Jurgens, he sort of does.

Burlingame: It feels like, even though this is a very stand-alone book, the Waverider stuff plays into the bigger theme of the Linear Men at that time in the books, which is, "Do something, you jerks."

Jurgens: Right. It's weird, I think I probably didn't realize it at the time, but I look back at this now, and realize that what I was doing, I should say, was assembling a group of characters that I created that would function in that world. I think Jim Starlin did a great job of this. When he was doing Captain Marvel, when he was doing Warlock, he created all these characters. They became very much a part of his writing language, and his visual language. All that stuff existed to the extent that it was Jim Starlin-world. Now we see that times 5,000 on the screen. I think what I was doing was a lot of the same thing, which is I said that I have all these characters that interact and they make sense to me. They don't just have to interact once in November of 1992 and then we never see them again. We can use them to address different ideas and different topics.

They became very much a part of -- this is going to sound real egotistical, and I don't want it to-- it becomes part of like "Jurgensverse," as far as I was approaching Superman a little bit. It made sense to me. Whereas at that time, it might have been [convenience], I look back on it now a little differently. It made sense in a lot of different ways. These are the characters I wanted to continue to explore, and there was no reason they had to interact once and then not interact again.

Burlingame: And a lot of these characters and ideas you would continue to work with all the way up through the mid-2000s with your Booster Gold run.

Jurgens: Also, if you look at Waverider, which was a co-creation with Archie Goodwin, you have all these things that fit together and work. think it's a group of concepts that have been probably under-used by DC. I think there's a lot more than could have been done with it, and fortunately that stuff is still out there, so there's a lot more that can be done with it. I think concepts like the Linear Men, like Vanishing Point, and all that stuff, I think that's the kind of thing that has a place in comics. I think there's some cool things there that can still be exploited, still be used.

There's a lot to unpack in just those few paragraphs, and that's only a tiny snippet of the interview. (By all means, read the whole thing on ComicBook.com.)

The most important thing there, obviously, is that we should be calling Jurgens' oeuvre "The Jurgensverse," and that all the characters in it always were, and always will be, connected. That somewhere in 2019, Trixie Collins could pass Mitchell Anderson in the produce aisle of their local supermarket and give him advice on the best way to pick out a grapefruit, that thought makes me very happy.

It's also worth noting that Jurgens believes that Time Masters and their story-telling conceit of policing history remains an untapped source for future stories in the DCrU. That should be encouraging to fans of Booster (and Jurgens' work), as it means that the possibility still exists to revisit the characters and concepts (and unanswered mysteries) of Booster Gold Volume 2.

Here's to the future!

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Booster booster Kevin Munson wrote in a few weeks ago to let me know that he had spotted Booster in a place I hadn't.

My mother-in-law just bought me a great gift that I am adding to my Booster collection.

The book is "The Superhero Book: The ultimate encyclopedia of comic-book icons and Hollywood Heroes" 2nd edition by Gina Misiroglu.

I have only scanned it. Booster is mentioned in 2 sections. Pg 33 in the Blue Beetle section, and pg 130 in the JLA section.

Kevin's not the only one who liked the book. It has 4.5 stars from customers on Amazon.com. That's pretty good.

Enjoy it, Kevin. Thanks for the spot.

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