Since my antennae are always up for Booster Gold news, I'm being bombarded these days by nonstop rumors about which actor will play our hero in the announced James Gunn television show. The latest gossip (reported seemingly everywhere) is that someone has reported that they were personally told by someone else at a convention who it will be. Sorry, Internet clickbaiters, but I'm going to hold out for something a little more concrete before I declare the news Boosterrific-worthy. When DC/HBO are ready to announce the casting, they'll tell us.

Obviously, I'm not excited about this "news," but the dirty truth is that I really don't care who gets cast as Booster Gold on TV. That's because I know that they aren't making a television show for me. Heck, I doubt they're making it for any existing Booster Gold fans.

Why do I say that? Math.

Booster Gold Volume 2, which you would expect all then-existing Booster Gold comic book fans to have bought, sold approximately 53,000 copies of its first issue when first released during the month of August 2007. That's not too bad. Fifty-thousand continues to be a very respectable audience for a comic book even seventeen years later.

Compare that to the final episode of Peacemaker from February 2022. On release, HBO announced it set a single-day viewership record, and Forbes reported that over 584,000 households watched it opening weekend alone. You don't need to be a mathematician to see that 584k > 53k. By a factor of 10!

(If you want to turn those audiences into dollars: At $3.50 cover price, BG v2 #1earned a gross retail income of $185,500 in a whole month. An HBO Max subscription cost $15/month in 2022, so Peacemaker took in some portion of $8,775,000 worth of eyeballs in a single weekend!)

As the data indicates, if I was making television shows, I wouldn't be bothered by the opinions of a small minority 10% (or less) of my potential audience. You know I'm a die-hard comic book Booster booster, and if I could afford to get someone with the name recognition and box office clout of, say, Samuel L. Jackson in the role, you better believe I'd do it. He might not look or sound like Dan Jurgens' creation, but people would certainly pay to see what he delivers. And that's the whole point.

Not that I'm speculating, of course. I wouldn't do that.

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There's been a lot of talk online lately about who will act as or write for Booster Gold in James Gunn's proposed television show. Those choices will certainly be important to the show we ultimately get (assuming that we actually do get a show; remember that credible announcements by credible producers have been made periodically since 2011 with nothing yet having reached your television set), but the central question remains: What kind of Booster Gold will we see?

James Gunn has called Booster Gold a hero with “Imposter Syndrome,” and to a degree that's always been true. Booster's single greatest driving personality trait, his Shakespearean tragic flaw, has always been his unfulfillable desire to be loved. Abandoned by his (no-good) father as a child, most of Booster's greatest tragedies have resulted from his quest for external validation. It doesn’t matter how much good Booster does, nothing can fill the bottomless hole in his psyche's metaphorical heart.

Booster's successes, on the other hand, have generally been selfless acts. For example, very few inhabitants of the DCU are aware that he has saved the universe multiple times for no publicity or personal gain. Granted, he is often reluctant to get involved, and his solutions are not always perfect, but unlike his idol Superman, Booster is only a human doing the best he can to make difficult situations better. Obviously, his need to do the right thing supersedes his craving for recognition.

Booster Gold #31

The biggest pitfall when characterizing Booster is to portray him as an idiot. It's not lack of intelligence but poor judgment, usually driven by youthful brash arrogance, that leads to most of Booster's trademark misadventures (like establishing a casino on a living island or sponsoring a mind-influencing music app). Booster's need for the limelight makes his missteps extra visible compared to the likes of Batman, who operates in the shadows where no one ever sees him trip over his own cape, but Booster's intelligence and dedication to righteousness always see him through to saving the day.

To respect the character of Booster Gold, it will be important that any television series portray all sides of the hero who is, yes, cocky, impatient, and in need of constant adoration, but also intelligent, hard-working, and always well-intentioned.

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Some days, like when we know there's a comic book with a Booster Gold appearance coming out, it's easy to come up with content for the Boosterrific Blog. Other days, like today, it's harder.

I'm sure I could dig up something. (The Internet is a big place.) But today I don't really feel like putting in the necessary effort. So in fairness to you, dear reader, let me explain why.

This blog was created for two reasons:

1) as a catch-all for noteworthy Booster Gold news and events that don't qualify to be cataloged elsewhere on this site, and

2) to provide a regular dose of new content to drive site traffic so that traffic can be monetized.

Since Boosterrific.com no longer serves any paying ads (admittedly in part because I was never able to create enough clickbait to generate enough site traffic to make that effort worthwhile), driving up visitor metrics isn't much of a motivator for me anymore.

That leaves me with only reason 1. And today, I'm not seeing any Booster Gold news or events that I consider noteworthy. Sure, there's yet another new rumor out there about the long-in-the-works "Booster Gold" television show's writing staff, but I prefer to leave the rumormongering to others.

Maybe things will be different next week. In the meantime, thanks for visiting.

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If you're a hardcore Booster Gold fan (and if you're on Boosterrrific.com, chances are good), you probably know that his Legion of Super-Heroes Flight Ring is about 500 years old, his mother has no first name, and he has sassed Darkseid to his rocky face and lived to tell the tale.

You've also probably heard that Warner Bros Discovery, by way of James Gunn and DC Studios, has a Booster Gold television series in the works. You might have heard talk recently that the role has been cast and the television series is scheduled to start filming in July, as many corners of the Internet have been reporting just that.

Except, apparently, it's not. Many of the same corners of the Internet are now reporting that James Gunn (or his social media manager) has taken a break from developing the latest movie about Booster Gold's biggest rival, that goody-two-shoes Superman, to throw cold water on those Booster Gold rumors via a post at some social media website or other.

Honestly, at this point, I don't know what to believe. Were the initial reports hoaxes? Or is Gunn just trying to disguise the truth now that the cat's out of the bag? One way or the other, I suppose we'll find out the truth one day, right Superman?

DC Challenge #12, "Phase 12.5" written by Len Wien and drawn by Ross Andru, Frank McLaughlin

Hey, if Superman's not above stealing a whole bunch of newsprint to hide his secret identity, can he really be all that mad at Booster Gold for "borrowing" some dusty old museum pieces to fight crime? (Bet they won't mention that in the Booster Gold television show.)

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Internet comic book "news" is often like a children's game of telephone: Someone says something, someone else hears what they want to hear and passes that along to someone else, and the next thing you know, Blue Beetle will be co-starring in HBO's announced Booster Gold television series.

If you saw that news reported somewhere in the past week, know that at this point it's nothing more than wishful thinking.

The original report that many sites are referencing ran in The Hollywood Reporter. "Marketing 'The Flash': No Ezra Miller, But Lots of Batman and TV Spots" ruminates on the James Gunn-controlled future of the DC Cinematic Universe thusly:

Both executives have said some actors from the current universe could persist, and one who seems most likely is Xolo Maridueña, whose character Blue Beetle has close ties in the comics to Booster Gold. Gunn and Safran are planning their own Booster Gold show, and it is possible Blue Beetle could appear in it, depending on Beetle's reception this summer.

"Could persist"? "One who seems most likely"? As you can see, that's a lot of speculation on the part of the article's authors. Which is fine, so long as we recognize that for what it is.

It's not like we haven't had high hopes before. Once upon a time, people were similarly predicting that Booster Gold would show up on CW's The Flash or early seasons of DC's Legends of Tomorrow. He didn't.

Which is not to say that we shouldn't be hopeful. Blue Beetle could appear in a Booster Gold show. Assuming we ever actually get a Booster Gold show, I sure hope he does. All I'm saying is that we should all be careful not to confuse rumors with reality.

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