Russ Burlingame's latest "International Exchange" column with Dan Jurgens will soon be live at The Outhouse. A preview of the column is already posted at Comic Book.com. Jurgens seems to be everywhere right now -- in addition to last week's two linked interviews, Jurgens is also interviewed at Comic Book Movie -- but Burlingame still finds a way to get some good information from the typically tight-lipped Jurgens, even if it isn't strictly Booster Gold related.

ComicBook.com: Hey, whatever happened to thought balloons? You never really see them anymore, and I always kinda look at Guy's monologue at the end [of Justice League International #3] and think, "If only he'd been quieter...!".

DJ: Thought balloons have largely disappeared from comics, in general. There are circumstances where they work, others where they don't. My general approach is that if one member of the team has thought balloons, let's say Rocket Red, then they all should. And Batman never should, in my view.

I suspect that Booster's last thought balloons appeared in Extreme Justice, 16 years ago. These days internal dialogue is almost always replaced by first person narrative boxes. This isn't necessarily a narrative improvement as much as it is an artistic convention.

That said, it is awfully hard to image Batman showing thought balloons in a team setting in 2011, isn't it?

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Ambush Bug of Ain't It Cool News interviewed Dan Jurgens on Monday. There's not a lot of new information in the interview, but there is at least one key bit of awesomeness:

BUG: This is Ain't It Cool News. What can you tell us that you haven't told any of the other news sites about what's coming up for JUSTICE LEAGUE INTERNATIONAL?

DJ: The Booster Cave! We alluded to it in issue #2 and we'll reveal it in issue #7, if all goes as planned. And it's not what you think!

Looks like in March 2012 we'll be touring a cave! I've already got my official Cave Carson L'iL Spelunker's Hard Hatâ„¢ on!

Jurgens was also recently interviewed for the inaugural column in the "On the Five" series at It's A Dan's World:

IADW: As a defining creator for characters like Booster Gold, do you still find yourself maternal over what those characters do in the hands of others?

DJ: ...yes, I think any creator remains a bit paternal in regard to character's he's created. There's always going to be that sense of vested interest in a character that lasts over the years. Sometimes you'll see a later writer do something cool, other times one wonders what the hell they were thinking because it's so out of character.

Sure, we already knew it, but it's good to be reminded that Dan still cares about about the child of his imagination, Booster Gold. Note that Jurgens is specifically referring to "a character that lasts over the years." Does that mean that Jurgens no longer cares for Booster's long-forgotten first arch-nemesis, the Director? Abandoned by his father, no wonder he turned to evil!

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According to the solicitation, the Justice League splits up to combat the global menace of the Signalmen in this week's Justice League International #3. The more I read of this story goes, the more familiar it feels.

In the Silver Age origin of the Justice League (Justice League of America, Volume 1, #1), the team was united after combating similar but unique alien menaces across the globe. That origin was also the template for the origin of the post-Crisis on Infinite Earths Justice League. Dan Jurgens is no stranger to DC continuity, and the similarity between these stories cannot be accidental as he develops a new Justice League for the DCnU generation.

Buy this week's contribution to the New DCU to find out if the Justice League International gets turned into trees. Your purchase will make Skeets happy.

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The numbers are in for September, and DC has been crowing about how well they've been doing with the New 52. Rumor has it that digital sales have been blockbuster, and reportedly, September saw the best sales for DC Comics since 1991. That's good news for everyone who loves comic books.

According to Comichron.com, Action Comics #1, Volume 2 sold about as well in 2011 as Action Comics #1, Volume 1 in 1938. An impressive feat, indeed. Justice League International #1 didn't do quite as well, but still sold approximately 61,079 issues. That's a good number for a 21st-century comic book! It's certainly better than the 53,685 issues that Booster Gold, Volume 2, #1 sold in 2007.

But how does that stand up against Booster Gold, Volume 1? DC never releases sales numbers directly, so I asked an expert: Dan Jurgens.

Boosterrific.com: I was wondering if you had any knowledge/memory of sales figures for BOOSTER GOLD v1 from the late 1980s that you could share with Boosterrific.com?

Dan Jurgens: Whew-- I really don't have those numbers. I do know that BG did relatively well in the direct market, less well on the newsstand, from what I recall. I also know the last couple of issues did around 125,000.

Thank you, Mr. Jurgens. That's certainly more than we knew before. The final issues of Booster Gold were crossover issues with the Millennium mini-series, which probably gave a significant sales boost. But that still means that Booster Gold, Volume 1, #25 in 1988 would have sold far more issues than anything Booster-related in recent years (including the 57,096 estimated sales of Blackest Night tie-in Booster Gold #26 in 2010).

Hopefully this "New 52" thing will catch on, and Booster can reach new heights in sales.

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Regular Boosterrific.com visitors will know the name Russ Burlingame, as he is both a frequent site visitor himself and the web's foremost Booster Gold reporter. (After all of his news stories about Booster Gold, we'd have to suspect that Burlingame might be hiding an alter ego if Booster's public identity wasn't already well-known.) However, in his latest coverage of DC's announcement that Dan Jurgens will be taking over the reigns of Superman, Burlingame's single-minded adoration of Booster Gold seems to be warping his point-of-view:

As the creator of the character Booster Gold in the 1980s, Jurgens was approached to pencil the book when it was relaunched with superstar writer Geoff Johns and film executive Jeff Katz a few years ago; four years on, he spent the better part of the comic's 49 monthly issues drawing and later writing the adventures of a Booster Gold that was both a natural extension of the one he had written twenty years previous, and radically different in his personality and the storytelling approach to anything Jurgens had written in the series' first incarnation.... The result, most fans and critics agree, was a Booster Gold who came out stronger and more interesting than he had ever been. Can he do it again with the most storied character in all of comics?

Is Burlingame really asking Dan Jurgens if he can turn Superman into a star as big as Booster Gold? That's a pretty tall order.

You can read the whole article and see video of Burlingame's New York Comic Con interview with Dan Jurgens at Comicbook.com.

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