If you happened to watch the second episode of Stuart Fails to Save the Universe on HBO Max last week (as Shawn and Tony did), you might have seen this at about the 6 minute mark:

If you're very familiar with McFarlane Toys (as Shawn and Tony are), you'll recognize those out-of-focus yellow and blue blurs at the upper left are the 2022 McFarlane Toys DC Multiverse Booster Gold & Blue Beetle 2-pack action figures. Mint in box, Stuart probably has them priced at $100 or more.

Stuart could certainly learn a thing or two about saving multiverses from those guys.

Give the set decorators credit: those Blue and Gold figures are just two of many DC Multiverse background references which hint at the thematically similar parallel universe-setting of this television series, which could just as easily have been called Crisis of Infinite Stuarts.

Thanks to Shawn and Tony for catching this.

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Breaking news! Booster Gold screenwriter/showrunner David Jenkins posted Friday to his account on Threads.com:

"My Booster Gold won't be moving forward.
Can't improve on Mahershala's lovely statement so I'll just apply it here as well."

Jenkins linked to a Mahershala Ali interview with GQ.com in which Ali appears to have specifically called out Marvel Studios for canceling his Blade movie reboot:

"For whatever reason, that project is not for me. If they wanted to do it, we would've done it. So I have to move on … Again, you had me under contract, they have billions of dollars, if they wanted to do the movie, we would’ve done the movie. So we’re not doing the movie … But I feel ready to move on from the Blade questions. Those questions are for them. They didn’t want to do it, so they should answer that question."

We can all read between the lines here: It was the studio's decision to reverse course on the project. I'm in no position to know, but I wouldn't be surprised if either or both of the dismal performance of Supergirl and the contentious (and debt-laden) Warner Bros/Paramount merger were the roadblocks here. Jenkins being a vocal opponent of the merger probably didn't endear him to studio executives, either. Movie-making is a for-profit business, and sometimes the timing is just wrong.

Of course, it's also important to realize that Jenkins is only lamenting the end of "his" Booster Gold. Until Warner Bros firmly closes it, the door remains open that James Gunn and company could yet take our hero in a different direction.

Someone or other has been trying to get Booster Gold into your television set or movie theater since 1991, and this is the closest we've gotten yet. I'd say even considering this setback, we're still making progress.

Thanks to the many of you who made sure we saw the sad news. (Judging by how many emails I got, I may have been the last to know.) Try to enjoy your weekend.

UPDATE:

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Noah has pointed us towards an x.com post from @homeofdcu that writes

David Jenkins has been attached to Booster Gold as a showrunner and executive producer. This would indicate that DC Studios picked up his pilot script for the series.

To substantiate their report, Home of DCU directs readers to the website of the Writers Guild of America (directories.wga.org), where I grabbed this screenshot:

Looks like one step closer. That's pretty cool. Thanks for the good word, Noah.

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Thing 1: Regarding my conundrum of removing non-unique appearances from the Boosterrific! Database, Booster boosters seem to generally prefer that Boosterrific.com lists only comics with distinct Booster Gold appearances (option B). Rather than throw away that data forever, I've tried to ensure that there are now only two places on the site where you'll find links to those issues (the lists of books for specific advertisements accessible via the Advertisements page and the dropdown to select issues on the Comic Books landing page). Hopefully that will satisfy the largest number of critics, including the annoying little voice in the back of my mind that continues to complain about choices made by younger me.

Thing 2: As you're probably aware, Supergirl, um, underpeformed at the box office on its opening weekend. As the always-worth-reading ProgressiveRuin.com points out, there's probably more than one reason for that. (I'm part of the problem; I didn't see it either. Widely advertising that it's based on the work of my least favorite writer is a pretty good way to make sure I stay away.) Whatever the exact cause(s), there's no way the end result at the box office helps the development of the forever-in-the-works Booster Gold television show. Maybe people will respond better to Lanterns.

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Earlier today, David Jenkins posted to Bluesky:

Just handed the Booster Gold pilot in. I love it. One of my favorite pilot scripts. 💙💛
bsky.app/profile/david-jenkins.bsky.social

Cool. Though it inspired a few thoughts.

If the earlier instance of Jenkins deleting his posts about working on the Booster Gold television show wasn't an indication that he was off the project, why didn't he say so at the time? And here he's saying he's just happy about the script itself (which he's clearly not contractually prevented for admitting exists). Does all this indicate behind the scenes friction with the production or the studio?

And should we read anything into the blue and gold hearts? Hmm?

Whatever. So long as it's good.

Thanks to Rob Snow for ensuring I saw this.

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