Morgenstern, who at this point is probably responsible for more content on this blog than I am, notified me over the weekend that Booster Gold appears in a new YouTube video by Hollywood screenwriter Max Landis. Landis is the son of Hollywood legend John Landis and writer of this past weekend's big-budget Chronicle. Apparently, he is still really angry about the conclusion to the Reign of the Supermen story, so he does what everyone of his generation does: complain about it on the internet.

I disagree about his assessment of the effect of the Death of Superman on the history of comic books -- returning from death was old hat before DC hyped it to the moon -- but I applaud the fact that Landis does give Booster Gold full credit for naming Doomsday. If you don't mind a little foul language and can stomach a drastic evisceration of a high-point of 1990s DC stories in the name of comedy, it's worth your time to watch it. If only to see the only live-action Bloodwynd you're ever likely to see, ever.

As a rule, I don't post NSFW content on this blog, so if you want to see Landis' take on the Death of Superman storyline, you'll have to go directly to YouTube.com.

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This month's installment of Russell Burlingame's "International Exchange" column includes a small sampling of Dan Jurgens' breakdowns for the issue. It also includes a bit of social commentary.

IX: It's funny—Batman's comments about people feeling angry and pushed to the brink by governments they no longer trust is as true in a world without aliens and superheroes and madmen with atomic backpacks as it is in-continuity. Was that an intentional observation or just the way life and art play together?

DJ: Very intentional.

I've made it clear from the start that there are elements of this book that are supposed to reflect the world we live in. Consensus has become an impossibility. Any topic or situation seems divided with one party on one side, the other party on the other. MSNBC take an unreasonable stance to one extreme, FOX News the other.

And the minute one party actually does achieve supremacy and do something, like in Wisconsin, the opposite side goes so far as to try to throw a governor out of office. It's not a question of, "I want government to get moving again." It's more, "I want government to do what I want it to do." There's a big difference.

So, yeah, people are angry. If the DCU is to reflect our own world, there's no way everyone would embrace heroes because there's no way it could happen in our reality. With that in mind, Batman's commentary extends to both worlds.

After DC's last major continuity reboot in 1985, the first major crossover was Legends. At the time, America was embroiled in conflicts ranging from drug wars to class wars, cold wars to cola wars. Reflecting the social and political turmoil, Legends was primarily concerned with exploring both the role of super-heroes in the contemporary DC Universe as well as the public's reaction to them. After all, what good is Superman to a world that ignores or hates him?

It sounds like Jurgens is interested in re-investigating some of the same territory a quarter of a century later in the light of the terrible economic times and divisive political culture of the modern day. Hopefully, Jurgens and his fellow writers don't take reality too seriously. I'd hate to one day realize that the DCnU isn't a nice a place to live, and I wouldn't want to visit there.

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Football questions always tend to bring the weakest poll response. I guess in the Venn diagram between comic book readers readers and sports fans, not a lot of us end up in the intersection. Maybe Booster Gold made the better choice: you sure can be a hero longer than you can play competitive football.

I thought this comparison between quarterbacks was fitting, mainly because both are well-accomplished and both play in large-market teams. (Boston/New York is very much the way I've always envisioned Metropolis/Gotham.) Besides that, their personalities couldn't be more different! So who did the voters pick?

Last week's poll question: Which 2012 Super Bowl quarterback is more like Michael Booster Carter? (21 votes)

Two weeks ago, we looked at who you might want to join the DCnU Justice League International. This week, we'll look on the flip side of that coin. After all, if we want to add Blue Beetle, we'll need to make some room on that roster.

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Whoops! This was supposed to posted earlier this morning! Sorry about that.

Advance solicitations indicate that today's release of Justice League International #6 will be a character piece bridging the gap between the first and second story arcs in the young life of the DCnU JLI. Last week's preview (discussed here) also indicates that the issue will have a strong focus on Booster Gold. Focus on character with plenty of Booster Gold? That's sounds like our kind of comic book!

Buy this issue and make Skeets happy.

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Josie Campbell of Comic Book Resources interviewed Dan Jurgens last week about his plans for the future of the Justice League International. Perhaps more interesting than the future is the still-muddled past of familiar DC characters in the unfamiliar DCnU.

CBR: In terms of what's next for the team, you already dealt with one big, planet-destroying menace in Peraxxus in the very first arc. As a writer, where do you go from there? How do you top a guy who nearly destroys the Earth?

DAN JURGENS: I think since the first arc was very much, for lack of a better term, plot-oriented or adventure oriented, I think what we want to do now is something that is more character oriented. Sort of like your question about Guy and Batman -- why are they there? Obviously we saw how everybody was brought together and were really thrown into the deep end right away without having any real knowledge of how they function together. Booster kind of knew Fire, he kind of knew Guy; the idea is that they had met previously but certainly had not worked as a team previously. If you've never done that, why are you going to continue to hang out with these strangers? So the more character-driven aspect of it where they ask themselves these questions becomes much more part of where we're going from here, and we see some of those things dealt with in issue #6, which comes out [next] month, and then really kicks off with #7.

"Booster kind of knew Fire"? Prior to Flashpoint, Booster Gold and Fire had shared panels in over 140 different comic stories over the past 24 years. According to Jurgens' response, most of those co-starring appearances are no longer part of DC's history. Should readers be sad to see the relationship erased or excited to see it starting over?

You can find the full interview here. (Thanks to Morgenstern for pointing out this interview.)

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