Tales of the Human Target is due to arrive in your Local Comic Shop next week, on August 23. Tales is an anthology book, with stories featuring Guy Gardner, Fire, and Booster Gold. According to Newsarama @ gamesradar.com, Booster Gold was chosen because that's who Kevin Maguire wanted to draw. I'm very much okay with that.

That Newsarama article hyperlinked above is an interview between Grant DeAmitt and Tom King about a whole bunch of Human Target-related stuff. Importantly for Booster boosters, it includes an on-the-record discussion about why King keeps putting a dumbed-down version of Booster Gold in his stories:

Nrama: Okay, moving on, the next character that's in Tales is Booster Gold.

King: My favorite character in comics. I love writing him.

Nrama: Oh yeah?

King: I tell Dan Jurgens all the time, 'thank you for creating this character.' Even if I write him a little differently than Dan would write him, because Dan writes him a little smarter than I write him. I write him a little more goofy. But I love that sort of goofiness of him.

Nrama: Is that what attracts you to the character? The goofiness?

King: There are two things that attract me. Number one, I write these tragic, sad things. I never get to write funny. I love writing funny. I love comedy. It's a chance to get into that. And yeah, there's this like, don't tell anybody this, but I base him kind of on Futurama, on Zapp Brannigan and Kiff. You know how Skeets is his partner who, like, loves him and hates him at the same time? I love that.

I also love — this is the thing I got from Jurgens. What Jurgens understands about this character is, that in the end, Booster does the right thing and doesn't get credit for it. He's the superhero who's like, yes, he first thinks of himself. Yes, he first thinks of money. Yes, he's a goofball. But at the end of the day, he's really a really good person. He really is self-sacrificial. But just because of all that other bravado stuff, nobody gets to see that part of it. He's one of the nicest, best heroes in the DC Universe. Everyone assumes that because he's a goofball, he's not good. And I love that about him.

Nrama: So in the beginning of Tales, when he has that monologue about being just like Superman, he's actually right? He's closer to Superman than we give him credit for.

King: People forget that in 52, the big DC event, he was the Superman for a time. A character called Supernova. So again, you read that and you're laughing at him, but there is something in him that's just a little Superman.

The craziest part about Booster is that he had the stupidest plan in the world. He's like, I'm going to go into the past. I'm going to steal a bunch of tech and go back and be a superhero. And then he actually did it! He executed the stupidest plan, and it worked! There's something Brave and Bold about that.

Futurama? Really?

That said, all jokes — and my personal appreciation for King's ouevre — aside, I don't want to discourage anyone from enjoying Booster Gold for whatever reason they find to enjoy him, even if their reason isn't mine.

Live and let Booster Gold.

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With the death of the Justice League, Dark Crisis is finally upon us, and over at CBR.com, D.R. Bickham has interviewed Dark Crisis's chief architect Joshua Williamson about what the DC Universe should expect in the months to come.

But all we really care about here at Boosterrific.com is how Dark Crisis will affect Booster Gold. Thankfully, Williamson had answers for that as well:

CBR: Who is your favorite member of the "Not Really" Justice League introduced in Dark Crisis #1?

Williamson: The "Not Really" Justice League? That's pretty funny. I really like Dr. Light and Frankenstein. Obviously, I like Damian Wayne a lot because of my history with that character, and I like getting to write him in this context. Booster Gold and Blue Beetle are cool. I like all these characters, and that's a part of why they're here.

CBR: What kind of role will this unofficial Justice League play in Dark Crisis?

Williamson: Every character you see in Dark Crisis #1 plays an important role throughout the series. There are no throw-away characters. Dr. Light has some especially big moments. It is called Dark Crisis, after all.

CBR: I assume this means we can expect a big Booster Gold / Blue Beetle moment at some point in Dark Crisis as well?

Williamson: Yes, of course. I love Blue and Gold, and I'm happy that they are both a part of Dark Crisis. They have a couple of great moments, especially later in the series.

Hey, we could all do worse than "a couple of great moments." I look forward to them.

Thanks to Booster booster Rob Snow for making sure we saw this.

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Here's an interesting footnote in the adventures of Booster Gold.

George Morrow at CBR.com recently referenced a 2006 Comicon.com Pulse article in which Jennifer M. Contino interviewed comedian Patton Oswalt, writer of JLA: Welcome to the Working Week, about his "upcoming" contribution to the Justice League Unlimited comic book:

THE PULSE: Out of all the superhero cartoons that have come and gone, what do you like the best about JLU?

OSWALT: The wide-ranging aspect. Also, they don't just focus on the Big 5. I also like what they do with the villains. I wish they'd just do an Injustice Society cartoon. Wow!

THE PULSE: That would be cool. What is your JLU story about? How did you get involved with doing a story for that imprint?

OSWALT: Well, I tried out to be the monthly writer, but they thought a lot of my story pitches blew. But there was one they liked, which involves Booster Gold and The Atomic Knight. So that's the one I'm doing.

THE PULSE: Out of the zillions of heroes in the JLU universe, how did you settle on Booster Gold and the Atomic Knight?

OSWALT: I thought of the kind of story I'd like to tell first, and then went through my old Who's Who and figured out who'd be the best characters to tell that story emotionally. We'll see.

As we all know by now, we didn't see. Justice League Unlimited was cancelled in 2008, never having included any story crossing Booster Gold with the Atomic Knights. But Oswalt is very correct that it would make a great pairing.

Every Booster booster knows that Booster Gold arrived in our "present day" on August 20, 1985, a date our hero selected in part because it occurred before a nuclear conflict of the late 20th century (Booster Gold #14). But what you may not have realized is that the nuclear war of Booster's future history was better known as The Great Disaster of the DC Universe, and according to the heroic Atomic Knights, it happened in October 1986 ("Rise of the Atomic Knights", Strange Adventures #117).

Given that the goal of the Atomic Knights was to rebuild society after the disaster, a crossover story between them and future rags-to-riches success story Booster Gold would be a good story set-up!

In hindsight we know definitively there was no nuclear disaster in the DCU in 1986. Superman discovered that the original stories of the Atomic Knights were all fictional simulations (in DC Comics Presents #57, 1983), and the post-Crisis on Infinite Earths Atomic Knights would go on to aid the city of Bludhaven after a scaled-down nuclear event in Crisis Aftermath: Battle for Bludhaven — a mini-series drawn by Dan Jurgens!

Will we ever get to read Oswalt's story? Only time will tell.

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Whether or not I'm a fan of CW's programming, I have to admit that Donald Faison's portrayal of Booster Gold on DC's Legends of Tomorrow season 7 finale has certainly raised the profile of the character and introduced him to a whole bunch of people who have never actually set their hands on a DC comic. That's an objectively good thing.

So it is a worthwhile experience to read how the show's executive producer Phil Klemmer finally got around to adding Booster to his long-running show.

Here he speaks to Chancellor Agard for ew.com:

EW: Arrowverse boss Greg Berlanti has reportedly been working on a Booster Gold movie for years. How did the character wind up on Legends?

Klemmer: As you might expect, through the side door you'd least expect it [to]. I just remember [co-showrunner Keto Shimizu] and I were on a call with Kim Roberto at DC, and we were just talking about fun characters. I think somebody threw it out there, of course never [imagining] in a million years would we get Booster Gold. And then it felt like 15 minutes later, DC called us back and was just like, "Hey, Booster's yours." And just you have a moment of being like, "Okay, this is clearly a prank of some sort, because..." We were all giddy and in disbelief and then it just became a quest of finding an actor who was worthy of the character.

EW: Why was Booster Gold on your mind to begin with? Were you just looking for a DC character to bring in at the end of the season? How did Booster end up fitting the needs of the story?

Klemmer: It's always the tonal fit and just knowing, I don't know, there's just something so lovable and unexpected. You just knew that he was going to work as kind of a bit of the merry prankster, a bit of a BS artist.

Klemmer was also quizzed by Joshua Lapin-Bertone at DCComics.com:

DC: How familiar were you with Booster before this?

Klemmer: I just knew about him from the early days of Legends, when I would hear of various projects, whether they were TV shows or movies, in the same halls where I was working. And obviously dealing with Rip Hunter in early seasons as well. I just assumed that he was going to have his own project. I never imagined that he would come into our world.

DC: For building this version of Booster, did you draw upon any particular stories? Or did you build him from the ground up?

Klemmer: The creation of a character really takes place over the course of that first season, and then seasons to come. It's going to really be a correspondence between us as writers and Donald as a performer. We definitely wanted someone who is a little off center, and like, a little bit mischievous. But we also just wanted a charisma bomb.

And we round out our media tour with Klemmer's conversation with Damian Holbrook of TVInsider.com:

TV: Is the plan to keep Donald on the board?

Klemmer: For sure. We're not gonna let Booster get away. I'm really excited to write him—he's the kind of character you wish you could be. You could get away with murder and be so charming that you never really have to suffer the consequences. He's the antithesis of a writer. Writers are deeply neurotic and self-loathing self-doubting, etcetera. I think that's why we writers are drawn to those characters—because those are our secret alter egos.

Season 8 has not yet been announced. Will there be another season of Legends of Tomorrow? If I were a betting man, I'd bet yes (especially if Michael "Booster" Carter is on the field). Legends of Tomorrow is one of the few CW shows that has improved its ratings season-over-season, so I think we should prepare to see more of Klemmer and Faison's Gold come fall.

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As I type this, the #1 New Release on Amazon.com in the category of Comics & Graphic Novels Literary Criticism is

If you don't remember the original "Gold Exchange" columns, Russ explains their history in the introduction to the book:

It started at Comic Related, and moved to Blog@Newsarama when I did. Just as I was beginning my time at ComicBook.com, the site where I still work, Booster Gold vol. 2 ended, and with it, The Gold Exchange. There were occasional returns to the story of Booster Gold, and I usually took the opportunity to discuss them with Dan, but as a recurring feature, the column effectively ended with Flashpoint, like so many other things at DC.

With Comic Related now defunct and Blog@Newsarama several facelifts (and owners) on from my short time there, none of this material is online in its original form anymore. Back in 2008, I was assured by both outlets that I owned all the content I created there, so while the more recent content is owned by ViacomCBS (the parent company of ComicBook), the contents of this book represent an updated, formatted, and edited version of a PDF I put together in 2011, with the intent of offering it at the ComicBook booth when I tabled at New York Comic Con.

For that reason, while some introductions and notes reflect that this book is releasing in 2021, the "real-time" commentary element of the interviews is retained as much as possible. This is, to an extent, preserving a moment in Booster's history, and comics history, in amber. Appreciate it for what it is, and enjoy the many, many times I tried to get Dan to tell me a spoiler, only to have him say "Stay tuned."

I read those columns in their native locations, and I'm still tuned. (When will we get to find out who the Black Beetle is, Dan?!)

Russ was kind enough to share a preview copy of the book with me, and I can heartily recommend it to any Booster Gold (or comic book) fan who wants to know a little more about how the sausage is made, so to speak.

Support comics journalism and get your own Kindle copy (paperback coming soon, maybe even by the end of the week!) at amazon.com.

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