The latest issue of Entertainment Weekly magazine is out just in time for Comic Con and includes Chancellor Agard's interview with Tom King about many things, but especially his plans for Heroes in Crisis:

EW: Based on the cover, it looks like Booster Gold and Harley Quinn will play a big role in Heroes in Crisis. Why did you pick those two characters?

King: They're the two stars of the book along with the Trinity. I do this comic called Mister Miracle, which I really like. The way Mister Miracle started was me going to [co-publisher] Dan DiDio and asking him, "I want to do something amazing with a character, but you have to give me some room to do some stuff, and you pick the character." He picked Mister Miracle and that's how that started. It's unoriginal, but I wanted to repeat that success. So when I came up with this Heroes in Crisis idea, I went back to Dan and said, "Can we do this again? Give me two heroes, I'm going to put them through the ringer and at the end we're going redefine them to be central to the DCU, pillars of this universe." And the two he gave me were Booster Gold and Harley Quinn. I think they're perfect because they're almost two sides of the same coin. They're both, like, these manic dreamers who have made huge mistakes and come back from them. They're kind of these survivors.

I'm not sure I like the idea of Tom King "redefining" Booster Gold, but "pillar of this universe" sounds nice.

You can read the rest of the interview online at EW.com or in the magazine on newstands now. Heroes in Crisis will be in comic shops everywhere on September 26.

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Sometimes I worry that the delightful friendship between Booster Gold and Blue Beetle will be forgotten by the comic-reading public. After all, Ted Kord was killed 13 years ago. That's a long time in the world of comic books. For example, the DC Universe has been rebooted three times since then! (None of those reboots reinstated the Blue and Gold team.)

That's why I was so pleased to see the Pittsburgh City Paper's interview with comic artist Marcel Walker. Walker, voted the paper's 2017 "Best Local Cartoonist," was the cover artist for this week's issue, and was interviewed about it by Lisa Cunningham.

Cunningham: This week's cover features our take on Batman and Robin. Which Pittsburgh artist would you choose to be your sidekick?

Walker: Most people would say the local writer Wayne Wise and I are already an inseparable creative duo. Together, he and I have been working as lead writer and lead artist, respectively, on the CHUTZ-POW! comic book. We've known each other for years, and since we have so much creative stuff going on at any given time, we're like each other's sidekick and biggest fan. We have more of a Blue Beetle/Booster Gold dynamic, though. (The comics fans will understand that reference!)

Yes, we do understand. And it's great to see someone keeping the spirit of Blue and Gold alive in the public eye. (City Paper reports a circulation of 58,000. That's a lot of readers who are probably hearing about the adventures of Blue and Gold for the first time.)

You can see more of Walker's work (and his collaborations with Wise) on his website, www.marcelwalker.com.

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Aaron Young interviewed Dan Jurgens at Ace Comic Con 2017, and that interview has now appeared at ComicsVerse.com. Jurgens is unusually frank about his relationship with his most famous creation.

ComicsVerse: So, moving on, you've created a lot of iconic characters in comics. My favorite is Booster Gold, and you're written Booster Gold quite a few times, and I just wondered if you feel any sort of ownership over that character.

Whether you, you know, kind of have a sort of protective over that character. You know, have you ever had it where you're, like, read an issue written by anybody else and you're like, "Oh no, that's not what Booster Gold would do!" you know, or whatever, or, you know? Just talk about that, I'm just curious.

Dan Jurgens: Yeah, that happens but for the most part, you know, I've done most of the stories that were out there. And when Keith Giffen and Marc DeMatteis, for example, were using him in JUSTICE LEAGUE, Keith always said, "We're borrowing the character."

And I always looked at that as sort of like an Earth JUSTICE LEAGUE thing anyway which was just fine and I, you know, genuinely liked the dimension that Keith brought to the character, but for the most part, it's something I do enjoy doing. I don't know if ownership is quite the right word as much as kind of I suppose it's true that I'm sort of protective of the character 'cause I can kind of know where it can go and what it can do.

While Booster Gold belongs to DC Comics to use (or ignore) at their will, Jurgens can proudly take credit that no writer has had more of a hand in guiding and developing Booster Gold. He's written nearly a fifth of all the stories in which Booster Gold appears. Only Keith Giffen and J.M. DeMatteis come close. (They combine to about an eighth.) There are few comic book characters in history that can boast such creative consistency over so many decades.

You can find the whole interview at ComicsVerse.com.

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Last Wednesday, CBR.com ran Jeffrey Renaud's interview with Dan Jurgens about the Booster Gold appearance in Superman's Action Comics #993. The interview included the following tidbit from Jurgens:

It's kind of weird in a way, because if you go all the way back to Booster Gold, Volume One, Superman was a part of Booster's origin story. Right about then, John Byrne came to DC to reboot Superman, and we had to do some surgery to the book so it fit what John was doing.

I still have the unused pages from the book, which are still waiting for the Booster Gold hardcover so they can see print. No. That is not a hint. Uh-uh. Not at all. Nope.

Superman was supposed to be in Booster Gold #1?!

I probably shouldn't be too surprised. For those of you who don't know, Booster's origins, as originally conceived, were tied to the pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths Silver/Bronze Age Superman mythos. Booster was supposed to have stolen his equipment from the Superman Museum (not the Space Museum). His force field belt would have belonged to the original Braniac, his costume would have been made from Lex Luthor's power armor, and his Legion Flight Ring would have been Superboy's. That would certainly have given an extra edge to the Booster Gold/Superman rivalry.

I have to wonder, did any of that make it into the script or pencils of Booster Gold #1 before Byrne's post-Crisis plans to streamline Superman continuity? Even if Superman only made a cameo appearance in the book, it still would have been his first post-Crisis appearance as well as the first time Jurgens drew Superman. What a treat!

Hey, DC! Give us that book already!

(Thanks to Damian Damex for ensuring I saw this particular bit of news.)

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Booster Gold fans everywhere were really excited to see our hero tangling with Superman in this week's Action Comics #993, the first installment of a multi-part story. At long last, perhaps we'll find what Booster has been up to since Convergence or why he abandoned his New 52 costume.

Booster booster (and, as Comicosity calls him, "THE biggest Booster Gold fan in creation") Keith Callbeck put these questions and more to Dan Jurgens in an interview published at Comicosity.com.

Keith Callbeck: It has been a while since we've seen Booster Gold. He was trying to sort out the Convergence last time out, what has he been up to since then?

Dan Jurgens: We don't address that specifically but we do convey the general idea that he's been having fun jumping through time. I think there are some things readers can draw conclusions from as well, such as where, exactly, he came from.

KC: And we have Booster back in his pre-Flashpoint costume. Can we nickname this story Booster Gold: Rebirth?

DJ: I certainly approached this with the idea that it's a bit of a Booster Gold Rebirth story. He's been off the table for quite awhile now and things have certainly changed in the DCU since we last saw him, most notably with Superman.

I really didn't want to get caught up in the continuity weeds on this one though I did want to make it seem a bit fresh and familiar all at the same time. If you remember Booster, you'll enjoy it. If you've never seen him before, I think you'll be intrigued by the notion of who this guy is. He's quite a bit different from most of the heroes in the DCU.

Over at Comicbook.com, Russ Burlingame (who may not be Booster's number one fan but must rank somewhere in the top 10) also confronted Jurgens with similar questions:

Russ Burlingame: Of course, Booster has not been seen since the start of Rebirth, and here he shows up wearing his pre-Flashpoint costume and serving in his capacity as Time Master...seemingly right back where he was when his Jurgens-written series ended in 2011.

DJ: If you go back to Flashpoint, the two characters from the DCU that made it into the Flashpoint Universe was Booster and Flash ... So, I think there is the potential for a continuous thread here. Not sure how far I want to pull that, because again, I want the story to be more about now and not yesterday... but, yeah. I think there are certain conclusions one can arrive at.

Oooh. That Jurgens is cagey! If this is the same Booster Gold as seen in the pre-Flashpoint DCU, what are we to make of the origin story we saw in Booster Gold: Futures End? Or any part of Convergence, for that matter? Maybe it's best to leave the conclusions to the professionals.

In any event, both articles contain some pretty good Q&As, so check them out. And if you haven't already, don't forget to pick up Action Comics #993 at your Local Comic Shop.

Thanks for good work, Keith, Russ, and Dan!

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