Earlier this month, DC made several creators of the DC All In Special available to reporters. You can find snippets of the conversations at several websites, but I think these two posted this week at thecomicsourceblog.com are particularly interesting.

First, from the article "DC’s All In Publishing Initiative and Darkseid’s Evolution with Scott Snyder and Wes Craig: The Comic Source":

Reporters: Booster Gold is elevated to a new height in this issue as the person bridging 2 universes. Why is he the right person to connect these two storylines and will that remain his role in the future?

Scott Snyder: I was talking to Josh [Williamson] and we wanted somebody who hasn't been a huge part of the Justice League, but who would have a different perspective on it and be so excited to be welcomed in. So, we thought of a lot of different characters you wouldn't expect to be on there, from Ambush Bug to whoever. Then it was, you know what, Booster has this really powerful view of it because having been, not only a time traveler, but specifically being familiar with this kind of resplendent Superman inflected future of Legion, it feels like he would understand this moment in the trajectory of the DCU narrative, and he would see its importance. And so if he was kind of both the comical character who you're like. How could he be invited and then you start to get a sense of what it means to him to be here at this moment because he knows it goes a certain way and then suddenly when that moment doesn't go that way, he understands the gravity of why and how badly things can go because of that. So he felt like just the right kind of figure to bring both those things and we were really happy when Dan Jurgens liked the idea when we saw him.

We were on the Superman set in Atlanta and he was there. It was me and Josh and him and that's where we told him about it. When we got to visit the James Gunn Superman set and we're like, what if he hates it and we have to change it? But he liked it.

For the record, that meeting of Superman writers on the set of the Superman movie in Atlanta was back in May. So it would seem this has been in the works for a while.

And second, from the article "DC’s All In Publishing Initiative and Darkseid’s Evolution with Joshua Williamson and Daniel Sampere: The Comic Source":

Reporters: What went into the redesign of Booster Gold and his popped collar?

Josh Williamson: That's not a redesign. I'm not sure how much I can explain about this without getting to in the weeds with spoilers for the future. So, in the beginning he's wearing the last costume he wore. He is the costume from Blue and Gold that Dan Jurgens design with Ryan Sook. That's the costume he's wearing in at the beginning, and then we originally pointed it out [in the story], but we cut the line because we thought it was a little weird for Booster in the middle of this very bad situation, to say, wait a minute, why am I back in my original costume, minus the cape? Which is funny cause Dan Jurgens and I had this whole talk about this, because it was originally because Booster really idolized Superman. So when he would show up really early on, he would sometimes wear the cape. And I was thinking about that, but Danny had already drawn that page and I was thinking, he should have a cape. And then Dan Jurgens was the one that said Booster only wears the cape during press conferences, and I said perfect, good. OK, don't worry about it. We don't have to worry about this, but he's wearing his original first appearance costume in in the last scene, and there's a reason for that. That is a spoiler for future stuff. Let's just say something happened to Booster that made him revert back to his original stuff, so I can't go beyond that without giving out spoilers for much further down the line.

"Revert back to his original stuff"? Hmm. Sounds like something a Time Master would need to investigate.

Those two articles contain even more All in Booster Gold info than I reposted here, so you might want to go read them before you get your hands on DC All In Special #1 next week.

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Late last week, Newsaradar finally shed a little light on what we should expect from the upcoming Future State event in an interview with Dark Nights: Death Metals writer Scott Snyder, who says

Death Metal ends in January, and then January and February is Future State, which is going to give glimpses of possible DC futures. That was built while we were doing Death Metal to lead into some stuff which isn't happening anymore, but those plans have taken a new shape, which is exciting.

The article authors, Michael Doran and Kat Calamia, speculate that the "stuff which isn't happening anymore" is more than likely the 5G event promoted by former DC Comics publisher Dan DiDio before he was abruptly fired back in February. It looks to me like Future State is the company trying to salvage the sunk cost of that project in a month-long alternate-continuity event similar to the sort of stories we saw in 2011's Flashpoint and 2015's Convergence. Whether they call it "Future State," "Elseworlds," or "Hypertime," DC loves these things.

I don't know Scott Snyder, so I don't know if his "is exciting" comment is sincere or salesmanship. (Was it not exciting in its original form? "Exciting" like a roller coaster or a car fire?) Whichever the case, so long as Booster Gold is involved and on covers like these, I'm on board.

Generations: Shattered #1 card stock variant cover by Lee Bermejo

You can read the original article at GamesRadar.com.

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Booster booster Logan writes in to say

I spy with my little eye one Booster Gold in today's Dark Nights: Death Metal #3! My intuition nudged me to reserve a copy at my LCBS last week—I'm glad it looks to have paid off. :)

Trust that instinct, Logan! Booster is one of many, many characters in Dark Nights: Death Metal #3. In fact, his appearance in this story is that Greg Capullo-drawn panel Scott Snyder teased on Twitter back in June. So that's one mystery solved.

Go ahead and buy this issue to make Skeets happy, but don't expect to understand what's happening. I sure don't.

The issue references dozens of other comics published over the past two decades, challenging the recall of even hard-core continuity fans like me. There are four Batmen (Batmans?) in the first four story pages alone. Have I met them all before? (Wasn't Silver Surfer Batman one of those Legends of the Dark Knight action figures?)

Not even issue editor Marie Javins (who also happens to be one of the few to survive Monday's "bloodbath" of layoffs at Warner/DC) expects readers to be able to decipher who's doing what to whom here.

If I'm making up my own stories, Marie, I certainly don't need to be giving DC $5 for this.

According to the checklist in the back of the issue, there are — count 'em — twenty (!) *more* comics to go in this seven-issue mini-series. I guess I should praise DC's brevity for keeping it down to 24. It took 26 issues to list everyone in 1985's Who's Who, and there were only two Batmens back then. On the other hand, if this event is anything like what we've seen recently, the "end" of the story will only bleed into the next event series with twice as many issues and derivative characters again. Twenty three is a very small number compared to infinity and beyond!

Sorry, but I think I'll pass. My head-banging days are long behind me. I think I'll stick to the Wonder Comics imprint from now on.

Keep up the good work, Logan. If Booster appears in any more Death Metal issues, I'm counting on you to let me know!

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If you venture to your Local Comic Shop today, you may find the collected Year of the Villain: Hell Arisen TPB among the new releases. Then again, you may not. Year of the Villain: Hell Arisen #3 was so popular, it's already been through three printings, so it's not hard to imagine that the trade collecting the whole series won't also be popular.

If you didn't know by now, Booster Gold can be seen in three of the Year of the Villain: Hell Arisen mini-series' four issues. He doesn't have a single line of dialogue in any of those issues, so it's kind of like a series of glorified cameo appearances.

And since we're on the subject of cameo appearances:

Superman: Man of Tomorrow #7, words by Dave Wielgosz; art by Miguel Menonca, Yasmine Putri, David Baron

On the bottom left you'll see Booster Gold appearing in the digital first Superman: Man of Tomorrow #7, now available at Comixology.com. Those stories will presumably be printed on real-world paper one of these days, though DC has yet to announce a date. I'll try to keep you posted. Thanks to fabri24cr for calling our attention to that.

Booster Gold is on the left side of this panel, too, though which Booster Gold from which corner of the Multiverse, I can't be sure. That image of Greg Capullo art comes from this recent Tweet from Scott Snyder, the writer behind this summer's multiverse-spanning Dark Nights: Death Metal event. The panel doesn't appear in Dark Nights: Death Metal #1, which was released yesterday, but you still might want to pick that comic up so you'll have a chance at deciphering what's happening when Booster does arrive on the scene. (Again, thanks to fabri24cr for deciphering that the panel has to be Death Metal-related.)

DCEASED: Dead Planet #1, words by Tom Taylor; at by Trevor Hairsine, Stefano Gaudinao, Gig Baldissini

Booster Gold appears on the right for a change in the upcoming DCEASED: Dead Planet #1. Why not the left side of the panel? Maybe because he's a ghost. (Well, not a ghost, exactly. Booster didn't die in DCEASED: A Good Day To Die so much as he was erased from history. Therefore, this is really more of an hallucinatory flashback courtesy the tortured memory of Jon Constantine than it is an actual cameo appearance.) Dead Planet #1 is due out next week in two weeks, and I might have missed it if not for Booster booster Logan Peterson pointing it out. The preview is already available on CBR.com.

It's starting to look like the summer of Booster Gold.

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