Let me start with this disclaimer: I don't speak Spanish. The following story by Xabier Migelez comes to me secondhand through MSN.com and Google Translate:

Javier Dãvila loses the boat of 'Pasapalabra' because of the Booster Gold robot

Javier Dãvila caressed the juicy pot of 'Pasapalabra' on Monday . The man from Salamanca played a great program, but could not win the 1,570,000 euros at stake. For the second time in this stage, Dãvila was just one word away from correctly completing the rosco .

The program was looking for the "name of the comic book character, who is a robot, who accompanies the superhero Booster Gold on his adventures" , but did not find the correct answer. The contestant went around the donut six times, leaving only the letter 'S' unanswered.

Despite having more than enough time on the scoreboard, Dãvila acknowledged not knowing the answer: "I'll keep thinking because Booster Gold doesn't sound like anything to me. As long as I have time, I'll have hope." But after Pablo [Diaz]'s second ruling, the man from Salamanca had to risk and choose an answer. He said 'Stan', the very name of the autonomous valet robot that already works at Lyon Airport , but it wasn't the answer the show was looking for.

You mean to tell me there is a Spanish television game show that asked its contestant about Booster Gold's sidekick? I'm not sure I'd believe that even without the questionable syntax of Google Translate if I hadn't found a video clip of the episode on the website of the show's channel, antena3.com.

One-and-a-half million euros is a lot of money to lose, but don't feel too bad, Dávila. I'm sure most Americans don't recognize Skeets, either.

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Back before the DCU was overwritten by the DCnU, and before "The Arrowverse" was a thing on TV, Green Arrow and Black Canary got married in the appropriately titled Green Arrow and Black Canary Wedding Special in 2007. Everyone who was anyone was there, which means that of course Booster Gold was there — in a strictly non-speaking cameo appearance.

Ok, well, technically, as we now know (but Booster didn't at the time), Booster didn't really attend the marriage as there wasn't any actual marriage in that issue. In follow-up issues of Green Arrow/Black Canary, it was soon revealed that the Green Lantern who exchanged vows in The Wedding Special was an imposter. But that's sort of par for the course in the star-crossed Arrow/Canary relationship.

Someone at DC must love doomed weddings, because this week The Wedding Special, previously collected in The Wedding Album, is getting collected for a second time in Green Arrow/Black Canary: Till Death Do They Part.

As you can see, even if the unions don't last, memories of weddings are eternal. That's why you should get yourself in as many wedding photos as possible. Consider it another good lesson learned from Booster Gold comics.

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I've lost track of the number of stories I've seen on the Internet repeating the news of the upcoming Blue and Gold series. But I've already seen exactly one person calling for the not-yet-announced-but-should-be pairing of the Gold and Blue.

I agree with George. I am ready to give DC Comics money to read that, too. (And judging by the number of people who think I should be tracking Gold Beetle appearances, I'm not the only one.)

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As all Booster boosters know by now, DC has announced a new Blue Beetle/Booster Gold mini-series coming in July 2021. What you may not know is just how long it has taken to get to this blessed event. What follows is the third in a series of three posts that originally appeared here on Boosterrific in June 2011:

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After reading an interview in 1988's Direct Currents #8 with Dan Jurgens and searching through the letter columns in early-1990s Justice League America comics (part 1 and part 2 of this series, respectively), I decided that it was time to go straight to the original source and ask Dan Jurgens about the fate of The Blue and the Gold series that he was once so excited about.

BOOSTERRIFIC: Looking back, I came across a copy of DC's DIRECT CURRENTS promotional flier which featured an interview with you in it's "People at Work" segment (DIRECT CURRENTS #8, August 1988). In that interview -- interviewer unknown, though Paul Kupperberg gets writing credit -- largely promoting your work on FLASH GORDON), you mentioned an upcoming project:

"And, of course, the one project I'm really excited about is something that DC's still got in the planning stages, called THE BLUE AND THE GOLD, a new series starring Booster Gold with the Blue Beetle. They've gotten real popular as buddies in Justice League International, so I think a book co-starring the two of them is a natural. It's going to have that unique JLI flavor to it."

Clearly that book never materialized. Do you remember anything about this planned series, such as how far into development it might have gotten or what finally prevented its publication?

DAN JURGENS: Yes, that was definitely on the board a couple of different times. There were, I think, three different times when we were just about to start working on it and then something would come up that prevented us from doing so. Generally, I think it was my overall workload, or an idea to hold it off for another event or something like that. I think there were even some points where we were going to try to tie in with a specific JL event, and then I got too busy to do so.

It's odd, because it was everyone's intention-- DC included, to actually get it done.

BOOSTERRIFIC: You state that the delays may have been cause by your workload. Was this book -- presumably an ongoing -- your idea, or did an editor at DC assign you this project? Did DC never consider handing the project off to another writer/artist?

DAN JURGENS: It's impossible for me to answer the question of what DC might have considered, but I don't remember any discussions of another creative team. We did play around with the idea of someone else writing the book-- Mike Carlin-- for awhile, which would have been a lot of fun. We probably thought of it more as a mini-series because that was a good way to introduce a book at the time.

But I was really, really busy with a lot of stuff-- and any window I had to fit it in seemed to open and close in a hurry.

BOOSTERRIFIC: During the several years where there was a possibility this thing would go to market, was any actual work -- scripts or art -- done, or did it never make it out of the planning stages?

DAN JURGENS: No scripts or art were ever done. Lots of conversations and ideas and we got as close as thinking we'd be starting in the next three or four weeks, but something always came up. I couldn't tell you what each of those events might have been, however.

Comics were like that then. In terms of planning, things were a bit more loose than they are now. We'd often have those, "let's do this!" types of conversations that would sometimes become a reality, other times not. There have been several times when I was part of a project that I truly thought would happen, but for whatever reason didn't. Or would kind of morph into something else.

BOOSTERRIFIC: I was surprised to see you mention this project in 1988. For awhile it was promoted in the letter column of the Giffen/DeMatteis JLI. You may not remember, but I would be interested to know at what point you recall this project being finally cancelled (or at least so far on the back burner that no one discussed it anymore)? Was the window of opportunity closed for this project by the time you took over as JLI scribe in 1992 (at which point you wrote/drew Booster and Beetle monthly)?

DAN JURGENS: The project wasn't ever cancelled, so much as it simply didn't happen. If there's no true, official start, you can't cancel it after all. We had the best of intentions but it just didn't materialize.

I do think that by the time I took on JLA that we sort of saw that as a Blue and Gold vehicle, especially since it was such a good opportunity to tie the book into the "Death of Superman" story.

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So that's that; the story of The Blue and Gold series that almost was. Boosterrific.com offers a hearty thank you to Dan Jurgens for his time and generosity in indulging us with an interview about a comic book he never worked on... until now. 😉

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As all Booster boosters know by now, DC has announced a new Blue Beetle/Booster Gold mini-series coming in July 2021. What you may not know is just how long it has taken to get to this blessed event. What follows is the second in a series of three posts that originally appeared here on Boosterrific in June 2011:

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Just a few months after Dan Jurgens teased the impending release of The Blue and the Gold in August 1988's Direct Currents #8 (as posted in part 1 of this series), the news was confirmed in the Justice Log letter column of Justice League International #25 (April 1989).

These letter column responses are presumably written by series editor, Andy Helfer, or more likely his assistant, Kevin Dooley. They should be in position to know the accuracy of the following news they printed a few months later in Justice League America #32 (November 1989).

I don't know where the news of the new publication date was was released first, but it doesn't much seem to matter. That "semi-regular" series hint seems to suggest that by this time, DC had decided that the ideas behind The Blue and the Gold series had been rolled into what eventually became Justice League Quarterly at the end of 1990. More news about The Blue and the Gold series wouldn't appear until writer/artist Dan Jurgens and editor Brian Augustyn took over the series in 1992. The news wasn't good, but at least it was honest. From Justice League America #64 (July 1992):

Jurgens was the go-to man for many of DC's major event series in the early- to mid-1990s, and his schedule was always full. Worse, just a few issues later, Booster would be powerless, and Beetle would be in his second coma, both thanks to Doomsday. Months passed before both were back in fighting condition, and this storyline seems to preclude the opportunity for a spin-off mini-series focusing on the pair. The letter column for Justice League America #71 (February 1993) seems to confirm this being the end of the road for the long-planned series. This is the last mention of The Blue and Gold in the series.

Five years after Dan Jurgens called it "the one project I'm really excited about," The Blue and the Gold looked like another missed opportunity.

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Next time, we'll revisit my 2011 Q&A with Dan Jurgens about the fate of The Blue and the Gold series.

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