With DC Comics moving on from Convergence, I was worried that we'd seen the last of Russ Burlingame's "Gold Exchange" columns. But Burlingame was on the ball, and his interview with Dan Jurgens over Convergence Booster Gold #2 was published last week.

Burlingame:Last thing's first: How long have you known what Older Booster's final fate would be? It feels really organic to Convergence but at the same time, he was a HUGE player in Time Masters: Vanishing Point where Waverider's corpse played a big role.

Dan Jurgens:I've always had a couple of thoughts in mind for Booster's fate. This is the one that worked.

It seemed a natural evolution. And, because this was an older Booster Gold, there are still a huge number of stories left to tell that would have existed between the end of Time Masters and the events of Convergence: Booster Gold #2.

Burlingame: Do you have an idea how Booster Classic ended up working with A.R.G.U.S., or is that just a mystery of the New 52 era?

Jurgens:Yes, I have a definitive idea. It really has to involve the notion of that particular Booster crossing over from the pre-Flashpoint universe to the New 52 Universe.

Booster had some lines in these last two issues along the lines of, "The things I've seen, the things I've done..." There are a number of stories that would have taken place, one of which would have led to the A.R.G.U.S. suit.

Will those stories never get told? Argh! I need to know!

If you haven't already, you should head over and read the whole interview at ComicBook.com. Clearly Jurgens has a lot of ideas for Booster Gold stories but not a lot of places to tell them. Someone should talk to DC about that.

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It cannot be denied that the original cast of Booster Gold was pale. Michael Carter was white. Trixie Collins was white. Dirk Davis was white. About the only characters in the first six issues who weren't white were Booster's orange cats, Jack and Jill. (Hey, it's not Booster's fault that Metropolis was settled almost exclusively by Western Europeans and Kryptonians.)

The eventual introduction of supporting cast member Dr. Jack Soo in Booster Gold #7 finally provided an injection of some much needed color.

Soo was the best young inventor at Scientific and Technological Advanced Research Laboratories (aka S.T.A.R. Labs) when he was hired to create a new female super suit for Goldstar, Inc. He delivered on his reputation and earned his place in Booster Gold's supporting cast.

While Soo's specific heritage is never addressed, his tan skin, dark hair, and narrow eyes indicate Asian ethnicity. "Soo" also happens to be a Westernization of the fairly common Chinese surname "Su."

Of course, it's hard not to notice the sudden appearance of an ethnic minority in a comic full of white characters. But was Asian the right race for Booster Gold's first new supporting character? I mean, isn't "Asian scientist" a little cliched?

As always, I turned to creator Dan Jurgens for the answer.

Yes, we realized that we need to have a more diverse cast.

I would also add that "Asian scientist" might seem a bit stereotypical now, but it certainly wasn't 30 years ago.

Jurgens has a point there. While ethnic Asians make up almost 15% of all modern science, technology, engineering, and technology jobs in America today (second in percentage only to — you guessed it — whites), that number was closer to 5% in 1980 according to census.gov.

Thanks to Dan Jurgens for being both culturally sensitive and historically accurate.

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Convergence has killed the tyranny of the New 52, and humor can now return to the DC Universe!

Introducing Bat-Mite, a 6-issue limited series featuring everyone's favorite, uh, mite, I guess. Say, who's that on Corin Howell's cover?

Booster doesn't show up inside this issue, but I'll give you good odds he appears before series end. (Dan Jurgens is the writer.) You can decide for yourself what you think by reading the preview online at ComicVine.com.

Buy this book and make cartoon Skeets happy.

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Russ Burlingame and Dan Jurgens have developed a real rapport over the course of the past seven years of "Gold Exchange" columns. That relationship was renewed last week as the pair discussed Convergence Booster Gold #1:

Burlingame: Do you have in your head an explanation for the All-Star Western thing? Was that taking place on Telos?

Dan Jurgens: Whenever it gets into a case like that, I always want to avoid providing that explanation for every little thing that happened under the sun. I felt very comfortable addressing what the Booster Gold Five Years Later book [Booster Gold: Futures End] was because it just came out last summer. To go beyond that? I don't know how much the fans know and I wanted to make this as accessible as possible to people who were picking up an issue of Booster Gold for the first time. So it was streamlining it more.

In my head, I've always thought of it this way, and that is after Justice League International, Booster got kind of caught in a time vortex where he was bouncing through time. That would have included the events of the Justice League International Annual. And then from there, he kind of appeared in Booster Gold five years later. It's almost as if he could have gone straight to Telos after all that happened. That's just a classic case where rather than break things down, you take things at face value. You saw Booster in Justice League International and then you saw him in All-Star Western and then all of a sudden in the Five Years Later book, one could say that yeah, he bounced through time and then ended up on Telos.

I don't blame Jurgens for A.R.G.U.S. Booster in Justice League International Annual or the character's unexplained appearance in All-Star Western. After all, Jurgens didn't write those books. But you know it's been a bad couple of years for a character when even his creator can't make any sense of it.

Anyway, you can and should read the rest of the interview at ComicBook.com.

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So Convergence is now over, and it represents a paradigm shift for our hero. We shouldn't be surprised; the first time DC tried a weekly, eight-issue event series, it, too, rewrote the book for Booster Gold.

By the conclusion to 1988's Millennium, Booster Gold was penniless and disgraced thanks to the machinations of his manager, Dirk Davis. It was revealed that Davis had all along been a sleeper agent for the evil Manhunters, and he had manipulated our hero into a corner. As a result, Booster lost his solo series and very nearly quit adventuring altogether.

Davis' personality was hard to nail down throughout Booster Gold volume 1. Some issues he was Booster's friend, and some issues he was in league with Booster's enemy or trying to steal Booster's girl. That might make readers wonder what creator Dan Jurgens might have intended for Davis if Millennium hadn't resulted in the series' cancellation.

Naturally, I put the question to Jurgens himself.

I was merely trying to write Dirk as a more complicated individual-- multifaceted, as so many people are. So, yes, he was a huckster. The MILLENNIUM crossover came somewhat out of nowhere and we were encouraged to use important characters as Manhunters. I plugged Dirk into that role as part of the story, but was never really thrilled with the concept of doing so.

In this case, it was more about the general notion that we use fairly important characters as the Manhunters. It was also thought that it would be more effective that we use someone who'd been there from issue #1, and I wasn't about to use Trixie.

When I would have started the series, there was no plan for Davis or anyone else to be a Manhunter because MILLENNIUM didn't even exist. All of it came later and in a situation like that, you do what you can do make things work.

Nearly 30 years later, Convergence reveals that DC is still flying by the seat of its pants. Would we want our comics any other way?

As always, thanks to Dan Jurgens.

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