Wednesday, I recalled my opinion about the short-lived Booster Gold / Harley Quinn romance. More important than my feelings about this topic, though, are the feelings of Booster Gold's creator, Dan Jurgens, who revealed them in an exclusive interview with Russ Burlingame, as quoted in The Gold Exchange: The Boosterrific Deluxe Edition pages 603-4:

Burlingame: [In an earlier interview, writer Tom King] did seem to suggest that, had he known he was doing The Gift at the same time you were doing Booster Shot over in Action Comics, he likely would have gone a different way with it, since it was so strange to see [Booster] doing two opposing things at the same time.

Jurgens: Yeah. At the same time, I do think characters have to have a little bit of elasticity to them, and it was kind of a fine line in terms of how it might have worked. I also thought that in a book like Heroes in Crisis, it was nice to have Booster included, and I thought it became a good mix of characters that way. I thought that Booster and Harley made a really interesting pairing that was interesting to read, and they played off each other very well, I thought.

Burlingame: I didn't think about it until now; I probably should have tried to talk to the Harley Quinn creators who had Booster as her boyfriend for a minute there.

Jurgens: Which I think the internet reacted to quite badly, is that right? Or at least a good portion of it?

Burlingame: I think it was less about Booster and more about the feeling that they had just set up Harley to have this amazing relationship with Poison Ivy, and they were killing her off. And then probably part of that was jettisoning a same-sex relationship for a heterosexual one.

Jurgens: Right. I think... could Booster and Harley work? Yes. Could you possibly attract fans who are interested in that relationship? Probably also yes. I don't think there's a right and wrong. I think that if you write it well, you can get people invested in it.

Burlingame: That one just didn't have time to be written well, because the blowback was so instantaneous, and DC didn't seem to see it coming.

Jurgens: Yeah, I think that's right.

Jurgens is such a nice guy. If he doesn't have a problem pairing Booster and Harley, I shouldn't have one either. I can live with that.

Thanks to Russ for asking the question and giving permission to reprint it here.

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During my weekly visit to my Local Comic Shop, the store's newest employee waved me over. "You're the Booster Gold guy, aren't you?" she asked. I confirmed that I was. "Tell me," she said, "what did you think about Booster Gold dating Harley Quinn?"

I assume it was this week's Harley Quinn 30th Anniversary Special that prompted her question. (Booster's not in that, by the way. DC doesn't like to put Booster in anniversary issues, presumably because they don't want him stealing the spotlight. They didn't even give him his own anniversary comic when he turned 30, you know. Not that I'm jealous. I'm sure they'll do right by our boy when he turns 40 in 4 years, right? Right?)

Anyway, in answer to the original question, what I said back in 2020 was

On the one hand, if Booster and Harley were real people and not comic book characters, they'd deserve the same chance at happiness as everyone else. Regardless of the fact that she was trying to kill him as recently as a year ago, the pair would still have the right to seek happy, fulfilling romantic relationships regardless of their past history or public opinion. Whatever anyone outside the relationship (read: me) thinks about the suitability of the pairing of a jock from the future and a psychopath's gun moll should be irrelevant to that relationship.

On the other hand, neither Harley nor Booster is a real person. They are comic book characters who have become widely recognized by fans for being in decades-long relationships with other members of their same sex. Booster's relationship with BFF and fellow hero Blue Beetle has always been intimate but canonically platonic, yet the dastardly damsels Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy have chosen a more physical relationship. (As is the norm in American popular entertainment, the good guys have to play it straight while the femme fatales enjoy "forbidden" love.) Is it a coincidence that these two standard-bearers of non-traditional relationships were chosen to enter into a gender-conforming heterosexual relationship by publishers, editors, writers, and artists who should be aware of the characters' metatextual associations? I find that hard to believe.

That still pretty much sums up my feelings, especially in the wake of the aforementioned 30th Anniversary Special, which goes way out of its way to lean into the Harley/Ivy romantic/sexual relationship.

That said, my opinion about the issue really isn't that important. But I can think of someone's whose is. (Hint: his initials are "DJ.") I'll have more to say about that in a future post.

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The preview online at AIPTComics.com makes it clear that Booster Gold is in this week's DC Vs. Vampires: All-Out War #3.

And that's all I'm going to say about that.

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To borrow another quote from Tom King's interview with Russ Burlingame exclusive to The Gold Exchange The Boosterrific Edition book:

Booster puts up a lot of shields — he's got forcefields; it's a good metaphor — but he puts up a lot of shields around himself, and some of those shields hide a lot of depth.

I couldn't agree more with that. If there's anything that Booster Gold is known for, it's his over-the-top confidence, but that confidence is often just an act, a projection of how Booster *wants* people to see him.

Rarely is the difference between Booster's private and public persona more visible than in my favorite page from Booster Gold volume 1 #9, the scene in which Michael Jon "Booster" Carter officially becomes Booster Gold.

Golly, I miss thought balloons in comics.

That "At least it's... different!" really sums up another key aspect of Booster's personality: his determination to make the best of every situation (even when he's responsible for making the current situation so bad).

He might be a time traveler, but Booster Gold is always looking forward.

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Today's completely trivial statistic: 36 years after the first appearance of Booster Gold (on October 29), there are still 28 different days of the year that have not yet seen a Booster Gold comic released.

This includes Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, as well as September 11, and, ironically, my birthday. As it happens, September 14 is not one of those days.

There has been exactly one Booster Gold comic released on the 14th day of September, and that occurred one year ago today, in 2021, when Booster Gold appeared in these four panels of Justice League #67 drawn by Phil Hester:

pages 3 and 4

pages 7 and 8

pages 16

pages 19

It's a hallmark of issue writer Brian Michael Bendis to give everyone something to say in his crowd shots, so it's a shame that Booster doesn't have any lines. Oh, well.

Maybe Booster will get a speaking part in his next book released on September 14. Here's looking at you, 2027!

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