Russ Burlingame finally got around to releasing his 30th anniversary interview with Booster Gold creator Dan Jurgens on ComicBook.com last week. It was totally worth the wait.

Burlingame: Is there anything you would have done differently in that first series?

Jurgens: It's funny. The biggest discussion at the time perhaps was, when we started off with issue #1, does the world know who Booster is, or are we getting him at Day One? In other words, is he already partway into being the character he's going to be, so we can play up those differences? We actually had a lot of discussions about that and my feeling at the time was to get him halfway into it. If we start from Day One, and we get those first struggles, that we can't immediately show that which makes him different.

I'm not sure that was the right way to go, I'm not sure it was the wrong way to go, but I think there would have been ways to do it better, and if I had it to do all over again, I think that humor would have still been part of the book but I would have gotten more drama into it with heavier-duty villains, stuff like that. And some of the later stuff we saw, where Broderick came from the future looking for him and stuff like that, I think we should have had him in #1. Let's introduce his own personal adversary from Day One, get him in issue #1 or #2 so he's there and we can already start to set up that kind of confrontation.

Burlingame: When [Giffen/DeMatteis] left Justice League and then you came on, you were there for like six months before Doomsday trashed Booster's costume that began this long odyssey of getting him back to a status quo. Was there a master plan when you did that, or what was the thinking?

Jurgens: That actually came out of a conversation between Mike Carlin and me, where he said "Let's give Booster a little bit of a different look," just to dust it up a little bit. I said sure, that sounds like a great idea. So we started to pursue that at the time. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine he would end up in that awful, robotic sort of mechanical, big shoulder pad armor. It's like "Oh, my God," but that's kind of where that originally came from.

That's just a sampling. I encourage all Booster Gold fans to visit ComicBook.com for the full interview.

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Russ Burlingame recently interviewed Robot Chicken writer Kevin Shinick. Burlingame asked whether Booster Gold would make an appearance in the upcoming Robot Chicken DC Comics Special 3: Magical Friendship.

Burlingame: Any more Booster Gold? You know I have to ask.

Shinick: You know, sadly, I don't think he's in this one. I voiced him [before] and so when I cut him down, I'm like "Come on!"

See the headline at the top of this post? That's how I interpreted Shinick's admission. It's that knee-jerk response to bad news from people like me that keeps Dan DiDio from telling us the truth about what DC is and is not planning. That means that I'm part of the problem.

If I want to make the world a better place, I guess I'll just have to watch Robot Chicken's DC special despite it containing 0% Gold.

You can read the full interview, in which Shinick discusses some of the other things he's involved with that have nothing to do with Booster Gold, such as a Scooby-Doo/KISS crossover, at ComicBook.com.

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Marc Buxton interviewed Dan Jurgens for Den of Geek! last week and asked some pretty good questions about Jurgens' career. Of note to Booster Gold fans was how Dan feels about various eras in Booster's history.

Buxton: When you aren't writing Booster, did you follow his adventures? What do you think were some of the character's highs and lows?

Jurgens: I certainly followed Giffen's Justice League stuff with Booster, and ended up writing that book myself for a while, which gave me the chance to do Booster again.

In general, anything that keeps the character in the public eye is a positive, though I think it all got a bit too absurd at times.

Strange thing is that fans constantly clamored for a Blue and Gold/Blue Beetle Booster Gold book, yet it never happened. Nor will it, now that we've moved on to the New 52. That was an opportunity lost.

Buxton: Why was JLI canceled? Can you give us insight to what was to come?

Jurgens: I think they wanted to remold the JLA franchise a bit overall. Because JLI was a standalone book, I think they felt that the only real connection was the name. We kicked around the idea of a title change a bit, but they decided to cancel it.

I've always felt that was a bit short sighted. Had we continued, I'm quite confident that a year later we would have had higher sales than a lot of books they ended up keeping and trying to save.

Enlightening. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. If you have any interest in Dan Jurgens' 30-year career, visit denofgeek.us and give it a read.

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If you're looking for something to do this weekend between the hot dogs and fireworks, check out Keith Callbeck's "We Talk Comics" podcast interview with Dan Jurgens at Comicosity.com. Callbeck is a huge Booster Gold fan, so you know there's some good stuff in there!

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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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