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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I'm out of town and away from the computer for the week, but I've still got your daily dose of Booster Gold covered.

Dan Jurgens put one of those "artist's sketch" variants of Justice League #16 to good use when he put Booster Gold on the cover. Thanks to Rafael M. at ComicArtFans.com for the pic.

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In the future, Booster Gold might one day marry a blonde, but he's had his share of other love interests in the past. Before Godiva and Gladys, before Firehawk and Blair Butler and Trixie Collins, there was Monica Lake. And she was a real piece of work befitting the Corporate Crusader.

Monica was a career-driven actress who only loved men who could, ahem, boost her career. She tolerated Booster's bad fashion sense, lame jokes, and camera-hogging tendencies only for the reflected glory it brought her. This did not endear her to anyone, including Booster.

Their relationship lasted for the first year-and-a-half of Booster Gold's superheroic career before Booster finally showed her the door. (Literally.)

Of course, the cliche of the "difficult" actress doing whatever was required to get to the top is nothing new. One actress in particular during Hollywood's Golden Age had a similar name and a terrible reputation. I had to know if Booster's Monica might have been based on a real person, so I naturally asked creator Dan Jurgens just that.

Not really, no. I always liked the way the name "Veronica Lake" rolled off the tongue. It had a great sound, so I went with "Monica". But that's where the similarity ended.

It has been said that The Blue Dahlia screenwriter Raymond Chandler disliked Veronica Lake so much, he nicknamed her "Moronica Lake." But if Jurgens says he didn't copy that on purpose, I believe him.

As always, thanks to Dan Jurgens.

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Every Friday for the past ten years, Brian Cronin has run a regular "Comic Book Legends Revealed" post that clarifies some common misconceptions about comic book history. This past Friday, Booster Gold got a turn. Specifically, Superman's appearance in Booster Gold #6.

COMIC LEGEND: The first comic book appearance of the Post-Crisis Superman was in the pages of Booster Gold!

STATUS: I'm Going With True

[I]n the pages of Booster Gold #6 (by Dan Jurgens and Mike DeCarlo), Booster met Superman for the first time. ... Superman doesn't recognize the Legion of Superheroes flight ring, because THAT's the Post-Crisis Superman!

They essentially confirm it in the letter pages of Booster Gold #10, when people wrote in asking why Superman didn't recognize the ring.

Cronin included many great pictures with his article, but not the letter in reference. So here it is:

Read Cronin's whole analysis and reasoning (with many, many pictures) at comicbookresources.com.

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