Did you like Booster's appearance in Futures End #0?

Let's play point/counter-point!

Chris Sims of ComicsAlliance.com:

"The setup for Future's End [sic], the violent death of all your favorite superheroes, is the same thing that [DC Comics] used for DC Universe Online, Injustice: Gods Among Us, Flashpoint and Earth-2, and that's just the stuff from the last few years that springs to mind. As a company, they seem obsessed with violently murdering their roster of characters in the most gruesome way possible, over and over agian. At this point, it's their trademark."

Russ Burlingame of ComicBook.com:

"It feels like they've created a ton of stuff from scratch here, and while it has the potential to be a trainwreck trying to connect the dots between the DC Universe we know and the one we saw in today's issue, I find it difficult not to have confidence in the steady hands of writers Brian Azzarello, Jeff Lemire, Keith Giffen and the aforementioned Dan Jurgens given the huge promise shown here and their combined track record."

Heh. One of them has to be right, right?

If, like Russ, you are excited to read more about far-future Batman's adventures in the near future, Future's End #1 hits shelves today. If, like Chris, you found the experience familiar and nauseating, you can wait another four months for Booster Gold's next announced appearance.

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Russ Burlingame has already seen Justice League: War, the animated movie based on the first story arc of the "New 52" Justice League title. (His first report on that movie is online at comicbook.com.)

But what should interest Booster Gold fans isn't the movie itself, but the extras. The Blu-Ray includes the bonus documentary Creating Heroes: The Life and Art of Jim Lee. The documentary shows some quick shots of sketches that Jim Lee drew in preparation for the launch of the New 52. And one of those sketches is this:

This is presumably Jim Lee's vision of Booster Gold's New 52 costume. It's mostly similar to what saw print in Justice League International, with two significant differences.

1: Head. Although Booster projected holographic panels as early as issue #2, they weren't curved. Note also that the helmet looks almost boxy, more Tron Legacy and Iron Man than ski mask. Was that intentional or was it another unintended effect of so much piping, a pervasive aspect of all of Lee's New 52 designs?

2: Stripes. As you can see from the sketch of the back, Lee considered linking the blue stripes on the biceps to the blue "w" on the chest. That little detail did not make it into the final New 52 design, where they are very definitely two separate lines.

If you want a better look at this and Lee's other sketches, get you hands on Justice League: War, out today.

Thanks to Russ for sharing this with us.

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Here's something we haven't seen in a long time: Booster Gold in action by Dan Jurgens and Norm Rapmund.

(click art to embiggen)

Russ Burlingame received this piece of original art — page 6 from Booster Gold, Volume 2, #21, to be specific — as a Christmas present. That's what he gets for being the hardest-working Booster Gold reporter on the Internet! Thanks for sharing, Russ.

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So, so much to be disappointed about in 2013.

Last Week's poll question: What are you most disappointed that you did not see Booster Gold doing in 2013? (45 votes)

Maybe you heard — perhaps either from Russ Burlingame at ComicBook.com or from MetalWoman in our own Boosterrific Forum — the news earlier this week that novelist Brian Keene had been asked to "do something with Booster Gold," an invitation that he had to refuse. You may recall that Jeff Katz worked in movies before working with Geoff Johns on Booster Gold Volume 2. How do we feel about another industry outsider writing Booster Gold comics?

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Jesse Schedeen has composed his list of "The Top 25 Heroes of DC Comics" for IGN.com. I might not agree with the entire list, but I can't argue that Booster Gold deserves to be on it.

When you're a washed-up athlete in a world full of futuristic technology, how do you recapture that lost glory? Why, by stealing a bunch of gear and traveling back in time to present yourself as the world's greatest superhero, of course. Folks in the present day DC Universe don't tend to see Booster Gold as the great hero he imagines himself to be. He's more of a running joke. But he perseveres, and over the years he's proven that he really does have the right stuff. The combination of goofball humor and time travel antics always make Booster's misadventures fun to read.

If you ask me, "fun to read" should be what every comic book should strive for. Hopefully we'll see Booster bring fun back to the DCnU soon.

Thanks to Russ Burlingame for passing me this list.

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