The Internet's premier Booster Gold reporter, Russ Burlingame, is writing another book, this time an oral history of DC's Legends of Tomorrow television show.

Now, I've always been a little ambivalent about Legends. I watched a few episodes the first season because it had a "Rip Hunter" in it, but when I discovered Legends' take on characters in the pages of DC Comics (especially "Rip Hunter") was a bad match for my headcanon, I lost interest quickly.

That said, Booster Gold did appear in the series' final episode, and any oral history of the television show will have to cover how Booster was introduced just in time for the show to get canceled. I could definitely read more about how all involved felt about that.

I asked Russ what else Booster Gold fans should expect, and he said:

I already talked to Dan Park (who wrote the BG backup comic [Earth-Prime: Legends of Tomorrow #3]) and to some folks about the direct influence of Time Masters: Vanishing Point and Booster Gold #5 (which seems to have clearly been the emphasis for the episode "The Fixed Point"). So while Booster isn't a huge presence in the book, he's definitely a bigger presence than you would expect from a Legends book.

That's good enough for me.

If you'd like to join me in helping Russ, you can pre-order a copy of his book at Kickstarter.com.

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As you may have seen on the usual comic news sites like CBR.com, the complete Warner Bros. animated feature film Scooby-Doo! and Krypto, Too!, featuring a crossover between Hanna-Barbara's canine crime-solver and the Justice League, was leaked to the Internet this past weekend.

The leak is an undisputed fact. (I've seen the file. More on that in a minute.) What's not clear to me — or apparently to anyone else — is the motivation behind the leak.

These are other undisputed facts: Warner Bros. cancelled Scoob! Holiday Haunt¹ and Scooby Doo! and the Haunted High Rise² late last year as part of their tax write-down strategy. Last week, they also cancelled a third project, Scooby-Doo! and the Mystery Pups³.

But so far as I can tell, no one officially connected to Scooby-Doo! and Krypto, Too!, either at Warner Bros. or production company Digital eMation, has said anything publicly about whether or not Krypto, Too! has actually been cancelled. That's what CBR and almost every other website reporting on this story has said, but not a single one of those reports provides a single source confirming the cancellation. I think that's weird. (For the record, I also think it's bad journalism, but we seem to be losing that fight on a daily basis.)

Frankly, I can think of a lot of reasons why the movie might have been leaked, especially in light of WB's recent instability. I'm not yet convinced that the movie won't one day be released through official channels. For example, the film has a 2023 copyright date in its credits, and there's still listing on Amazon UK for a September 25, 2023, PAL DVD release.

I'm holding out hope for a public release because, as Booster booster Koby first notified me, Skeets is in the movie! As I said above, I've seen enough to confirm that DC's Number 1 Robot Sidekick appears in the background inside the Hall of Justice Trophy Room, right beside a model of the Blue Beetle's Bug. It's a pretty cool Easter egg. Maybe one day, everyone can enjoy it.

[Sources: ¹ gamerant.com, ² comicbook.com, ³ tvseriesfinale.com. See, that's not so hard.]

UPDATE 2024: Rob Snow lets me know that the movie is now available on Max, so here's a legal screenshot:

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On a recent trip to the bookstore, I discovered a DK book I hadn't seen before. Not that it's new.

DC Absolutely Everything You Need to Know by Liz Marsham, Melanie Scott, and others was released in 2018. That's how long ago Skeets was recognized as the Number 1 Robot Sidekick in the DCU (on page 143):

Interestingly, AEYNtK gives Skeets better press than Booster, who is indexed to four different pages but is pictured on none of them. Hey, at least he has the best sidekick.

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The corpse of Newsarama recently ran an article titled "Booster Gold - The comic history of DC's time-traveling himbo". And while I try very hard to ignore these sort of clickbait-y articles designed to catch-up readers who don't know any better, it does still bother me when they're misleading.

For one thing, Booster isn't "one of the first brand new DC heroes introduced after the major continuity reboot that took place in the 1985 limited series Crisis on Infinite Earths," he is THE first. (Dan Jurgens states this explicitly in print for the first time in the letter column of Booster Gold Volume 1 #12).

But that doesn't really bother me as much as this. Quoth the article:

"Alongside Jaime, Booster is finally able to use his time travel technology to go back in time and save Ted's life, bringing his best friend back from the dead."

Yeah, that technically happens at the end of Booster Gold: 52 Pick-Up. If you're only reading recent trades, you might think that's the end of the story. But as the follow-up collection Booster Gold: Blue and Gold — not to be confused with the unrelated Blue and Gold collection — makes clear, that time-displaced Ted must stay dead. (In fact, it's Ted himself who recognizes this fact and makes the ultimate sacrifice in Booster Gold Volume 2 #10.)

The reason that Ted Kord is alive and well in the modern DCU has nothing to do with Booster Gold and everything to do with the constant manipulation of the Multiverse by the likes of Doctor Manhattan, Perpetua, Pariah, and the like. Death is a very temporary condition in an infinite omniverse.

To be fair, maybe these were honest mistakes. The author's bio identifies them as a "Marvel Comics expert," so maybe they don't know any better about the goings on over at the Distinguished Competition. Maybe they were the only writer available when the "write something to fill today's quota of stories about proposed HBO properties" assignment was handed out.

I'm even willing to concede that "comic books news" blog readers who are unfamiliar with DC Comics' greatest superhero, Booster Gold, are probably not ready to understand how decades of publishing mandates have made DC's long-term continuity a nightmare for anyone trying to build a biography of one of their super heroes. So a little simplifying is probably necessary. No one runs before they walk, after all.

But none of that is any excuse for calling Booster a "Himbo."

Someone has been reading too many Tom King comics. Sure, Booster has many problems, but lack of intelligence isn't among them. Give the poor boy a little respect, please.

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I told you I had more to share of Cort Carpenter's Booster Gold sketch commissions, and I'm a man of my word. Take a look at these beauties:

Bernard Chang

Agnes Garbowska

Dan McCaid

Marcus To

I don't know how you do it, Cort, but these are all totally Boosterrific.

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