Discovered this week: the website of Regal Cinemas, a theater chain with almost 600 locations worldwide, now has a page for Booster Gold the movie.

MOVIE INFO & CAST

DIRECTOR: Greg Berlanti
WRITER: Dan Jurgens, Zack Stentz
RUNTIME: 2hr 40m

SYNOPSIS
Booster Gold is a superhero from the 25th century and travelled back to the 20th century to become rich and famous

Given that they haven't even started filming, much less editing, how in the world do they know it's going to be 2 hours and 40 minutes long? (Please, please, Warner Bros., don't let any Booster Gold movie run longer than 120 minutes, tops. If you can't tell your story in two hours, make it a television show!)

I'm pretty sure this isn't official. Presumably, Regal Cinemas is pulling this data from IMDB.com, which has identical details down to the same "sky-seller.com" watermarked pic of Smallville's Eric Martsolf, who, at the age of 46, is unlikely to be playing Booster on the big screen.

There hasn't been much news out of Warner about when, if ever, we'll be seeing that Booster Gold project Berlanti has been working on for the better part of a decade. The studio still has holes in its release schedule, so late 2019 remains a possibility. We'll see.

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Pop culture website 13thdimension.com posted an "exclusive first look" at upcoming issues of Action Comics this weekend. Running throughout the title in September and October will be a five-part story by Dan Jurgens called "The Oz Effect," in which we will finally discover the true identity of Mr. Oz.

Reading the advance solicitations included in the article, all I could think was "please don't let Mr. Oz be Booster Gold."

The popular theory is that the mysterious Mr. Oz, introduced three years ago (!) in Superman #32, is Ozymandias from Watchmen. Personally, I think that seems a little too "on the nose" to make a very satisfying reveal after all this time. And even if the fans were right and it was supposed to be Ozymandias, I would expect DC to change Mr. Oz's secret identity mid-story to maintain the surprise. (Anyone out there still remember the last minute Captain Atom/Hawk swap in Armageddon 2001?)

Many of the things Mr. Oz has done and said over the past three years indicates a fixation on Superman. Therefore, I assume that Mr. Oz is someone aware of Superman's past in Smallville, Kansas. (I think Mr. Oz takes his name from the original manipulative "man behind the curtain," the Wizard of Oz, who also has ties to Kansas.) While those clues might point to familiar Superman foes like Conduit or Ruin, I begin to worry that it might be a time traveler with historical ties to the Man of Steel.

Which is fine, just so long as it's not Booster Gold.

I mean, if Mr. Oz is revealed to be a nearly omnipotent time traveler seeking to unify a fractured universe (post-"Crisis", "Flashpoint", "New 52", "Rebirth", "Watchmen," etc.), it would certainly explain why fan-favorite Booster Gold has been M.I.A. since Convergence. And we can't deny that Booster has beef with Superman that goes way back. And Dan Jurgens does like to recycle his favorite characters . . . .

As I said, I don't want this to be the case. I don't want Booster to be a "villain." (And I certainly don't want to have to add all 30+ appearances of Mr. Oz to the Boosterrific database after the fact.) But it could be worse. After three years of waiting to find out who Mr. Oz really is, it might turn out that he's the Black Beetle.

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As the first character introduced to the DC Universe after the events of Crisis on Infinite Earths, Booster Gold was too new for his own entry in the original Who's Who: The Definitive Directory of the DC Universe character encyclopedia. (Volume III: Black Lightning to Byth was cover dated May 1985, nearly a year before Booster's first appearance.)

While Booster would have to wait for the 1987 Who's Who Update to receive his own listing, Booster's impact on the DC Universe was felt much sooner. Therefore, Booster first appeared not in his own entry but in support of one of the DCU's more established characters (insofar as a seldom used star of a back-up feature in Superman's Girlfriend Lois Lane in the early 1970s can be considered "established").

If you look closely, you'll see our hero in the background of the entry for Rose and Thorn in Who's Who: The Definitive Directory of the DC Universe Volume 19, released 31 years ago today.

Art by Dan Jurgens and Dick Giordano

(The less said about Thorn's costume the better. Obviously Thorn and Batman and the Outsider's Looker shopped from the same designer label in the 80s.)

Whereas Booster went on to become an integral member of the Justice League International, Rose has rarely been seen in the decades since. Maybe it's time for Booster to return the favor.

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DC's August solicitations, released Monday, don't show any signs that Booster Gold will reappear in the DCrU anytime soon (other than the reprint of Booster Gold/The Flintstones Special to be included in the DC Meets Hanna-Barbera trade due September 20).

However, in an interview with Terrence Sage, Dan Jurgens gives us a reason to hope:

Sage: For the last question, people are wondering and trying to figure out when will we see Booster Gold under your pen again?

Jurgens: I keep looking for a good spot to sneak Booster in here and there and I have a couple of thoughts about where and when it'll work best. Obviously, I have a lot of love for the character, but when he shows back up I want it to be in a meaningful spot.

Later is better than never, I guess.

You can read the whole interview at Comicosity.com.

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This week we thank Ken Harrison for providing a scan of this Justice League Spectacular house ad printed in DC's Impact Comics line in April 1992.

Art by Dan Jurgens & Ron Randall

I found it while looking through a copy of The Black Hood #5 in a very, very large box of damaged comics. The issue belonged to Ken Harrison, creator of the comic Steviebear, who recently lost much of his comic collection in a house fire. His late father, Gordon, had been a collector since the dawn of the Silver Age, and many valuable comics were destroyed by fire and water.

It's a small consolation, but at least some part of his father's collection now lives on here at Boosterrific.com.

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