Last Friday, I made a fuss over Booster Gold's new costume. After careful contemplation of what I wrote, I stand by my original assessment.

THIS COSTUME STILL SUCKS.

However, I laid all of the blame for the vomit-inducing misguided costume redesign on DC Co-Publisher Jim Lee, largely because that's who DC blamed it on in their original announcements. However, yesterday Lee announced that he would not be taking the fall alone. On DC's The Source blog, Lee wrote:

Months ago, when the decision was made to launch 52 new number ones, Co-Publisher Dan Didio, Editor-in-Chief Bob Harras along with DCU Executive Editor Eddie Berganza and VP-Art Direction and Design Mark Chiarello and I went over the entire proposed DCU lineup and bookmarked the characters we felt would benefit the most from a visual redesign.
... Realizing the amount of time and effort it would take to complete the long list of designs, Mark Chiarello and I enlisted artist Cully Hamner onto the team, giving us not just another set of hands but another style altogether so we would have a variety of styles to literally draw from.
... And of course, all the designs were shaped and refined by the input of a series editor, writer and artist. In the end, we wanted to make sure all the key creators on a title were satisfied with the final look of the characters as the creative teams were the ones who had to live with and draw the new looks on a near daily basis.

So now that we've gotten an eyeful of the worst costume designs since the 1990s, Lee is being sure to drag everyone else down with him give "credit" to all the other artists involved. What a great guy.

Does this mean that Dan Jurgens, a "key creator" for the upcoming Justice League International title, was a significant part of the team that designed that Booster Gold costume? Being pretty familiar with Jurgens' artistic history, I somehow doubt it. Would Jurgens' involvement in the creation of that costume make me hate it less? I somehow doubt that, too. This would be at least the third Booster Gold powersuit that Jurgens had a direct hand in designing, and it is by far the worst.

Not every costume in this entire shake-up is bad. The problem is that most of them are. And they are all coming at the same time, so rather than being given time to acclimate to the horrific appearance of, say, a Jersey Shore-Superboy or an anime-Deasthstroke, we readers are forced into making a snap decision: do we want to pay to look at these abominations Hot Topic-inspired fashions or not?

Jim Lee, I don't care whose fault it is, I just don't want to look at the comic books you are publishing anymore.

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Look, up in the Sky! It's certainly no plane. It's the first sign you're in an alternate universe: it's a dirigible.

Sure, we've got dirigibles here on Earth-Prime, but you don't see them everyday. However in alternate universes, such as the Flashpoint timeline visited in the panel above from Booster Gold #45, they are more common than birds. Why is that?

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The DC solicitation text for today's Booster Gold #45 is unusually vague.

Booster knows that the Flashpoint world isn't his own. But how does he get back? How does he make things right?

Maybe he doesn't.

Normally, that sort of hype would lack dramatic tension. At the end of the story, we would assume that everything returns to business as ususal. But now? If nothing else came out of DC's dramatic announcement last week, at least they are making us wonder if maybe this time things are a little bit different.

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In general, Dan Jurgens is tight-lipped in interviews. He rarely if ever gives away any secrets about his upcoming stories. That's great if you want to avoid spoilers, but frustrating as the firmament of the DC Universe appears to be reshaping itself beneath our feet. In the past few days, Jurgens has given interviews to both Comic Related and Newsarama that may contain clues to the future of Booster Gold.

From "Dan Jurgens on life after Flashpoint " by Russ Burlingame at Comic Related:

CR: This is probably a conversation for another time, but Booster Gold has been the protector of the timeline. What happens here, a massive shift in history and continuity and all that, seems to suggest that he fails rather spectacularly. Was mitigating that impression part of why Booster was allowed to be "the guy who gets to see Flashpoint"?

DJ: I don't think this change suggests that at all. With a lot of this, you have to wait until you read the end of the story.

CR: Of all the characters in the JLI, it appears as though Booster Gold is the character who got the most radical redesign of his costume. That seems to dash the theories that a lot of us had about his being the "Psycho Pirate" of the new universe--the one guy who remembers the way it used to be. Will we get a real, solid ending for Booster, Rip and company since their role in Flashpoint lends it to one more than any other title?

DJ: I'll be happy to answer questions about the end of Booster Gold and Flashpoint... once it appears in print. No writer gives away his ending!

Bad news first: Jurgens appears to be confirming the cancellation of Booster Gold Volume 2. However, Jurgens is a crafty interviewee, so we can only take his responses at face value. It's always best not to read too far into his responses. (Keep hope alive!)

From "Jurgens Brings International Flavor to DCnU in Revamped JLI" by Vaneta Rogers at Newsarma:

Newsarama: Dan, what attracted you to writing the Justice League International?

Dan Jurgens: It's the Justice League! International style, yes, but it is still a vehicle for some of DC's best heroes, which as part of this new launch, is tremendously appealing.

I've always been drawn to books that allow for a wide range of stories that have a chance to be big in scope, and the JLI certainly fits that description. Plus, it's a chance to continue to lift Booster Gold's profile, which we've been working on the past few years.

Nrama: Is this the whole team?

Jurgens: This is the whole team for this issue! After that... things can change.

The good news is that Jurgens is committed to raising the profile of Booster Gold. This means there will be plenty of Booster in the upcoming Justice League International series. Better still, if things are really so flexible in the future, maybe Booster won't be stuck with that terrible costume for too long!

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This weekend in the Boosterrific Forum, Comic Related "Gold Exchange" columnist Russ Burlingame asked: "As the hardcore fans of the series, what is your favorite single image from the Jurgens/Rapmund run on the title? It could be a cover, a splash page or whatever."

There are quite a few things to like about the Jurgens/Rapmund run. If I had to narrow it to one image, it would be this panel from page 5 of Booster Gold #12.

I'm nuts about the trophies in the Batcave. I think it's great that Batman cares for continuity as much as I do. It is wish fulfillment at its finest to see Booster Gold (and Goldstar!) travel back in time to steal the 1966 George Barris Batmobile from Alfred. What can I say? I'm a fan, too.

If you have an opinion, travel over to the Forum to tell Russ what you liked best from the soon to be discontinued second volume of Booster Gold series.

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