Take note, DC. Booster Gold's fans are very loyal.

Last week's poll question: Do you buy comics for Booster Gold when he only makes a cameo appearance? (50 votes)

Super hero television shows come in all types. In the 50s, Adventures of Superman played straightforward action/adventure. Batman reinvented camp in the 60s, and Shazam! educated kids in the 70s. The 80s saw a more sophisticated humor on The Greatest American Hero. In the 90s, The Flash tried to translate comic-inspired characters into the "real" world for a mass audience. The 2000s saw the origin story unfold slowly over the course of a decade in Smallville. Now Arrow brings heroes to the small screen as a soap opera (with flashbacks!).

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Yesterday, DC released its latest "DC All Access" episode. There were a couple of tidbits of interest to Booster Gold fans.

Starting at 4:21 in the Youtube video embedded above, host Blair Herter interviews Geoff Johns about the five DC television shows currently in production, specifically Green Arrow, I, Zombie, Constantine, Gothamn, and "the dark horse" Hourman. Notice anyone missing from that list? You have to figure that if Johns doesn't mention Booster Gold, we can probably assume it's a dead project.

When the conversation turns to the comics Johns is writing (at about 5:58), Johns goes on to explain that he considers Cyborg and Captain Marvel Shazam! to be "the Blue Beetle and Booster Gold of my era Justice League." I guess actually using Beetle and Booster in the New 52 would have been too easy, huh, Geoff?

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If you are the sort who pays attention to such things, you already know that Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. debuts tonight on ABC. So far as the glut of advertising would have you believe, it is only the latest, greatest thing to happen to television, like, ever.

What does this have to do with Booster Gold? Simple: it's a television show and Booster Gold is not.

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. entered development in July 2012 when Disney decided to take their successful Marvel movie franchises to the small screen. ABC ordered a pilot of the show in August 2012. The show was officially selected for broadcast in May 2013 and will be on your TV tonight.

Compare that to Booster Gold, announced in November 2011 following Booster's triumphant television debut in Smallville earlier that year. A script was delivered sometime around December 2012. Two years have passed, and in that time there has been no pilot, no noticeable progress, no news at all. Hollywood studios don't cancel developments; they just ignore something until it goes away.

S.H.I.E.L.D. is not an A-list property, yet it gets a high profile television show while Booster Gold doesn't. This isn't a knock against Booster, and it isn't necessarily a knock against DC. Disney owns Marvel and ABC, so it only makes sense that they spend the money to develop their own properties for their own distribution channels. In the meantime, Arrow has been a success for DC owner TimeWarner, but on a scale much more subdued than what Disney is attempting.

Recent years have been full of failed DC Comics television productions, including such high-profile characters Aquaman and Wonder Woman. Does TimeWarner not care about turning the DC stable of characters into live-action television shows? Who knows. The only thing we know for sure is that they certainly don't care about producing Booster Gold.

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The Justice League Unlimited episode "The Greatest Story Never Told" was first broadcast nearly a decade ago, but the AV Club is just now getting around to reviewing it. I'm doing much better: I waited only a week before reviewing the review.

Regular AV Club contributor Oliver Sava opens his review by comparing the episode to the Tom Stoppard play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Sava doesn't follow through on this reference, instead turning his attention to other, stronger influences on the episode. However, once mentioned, this comparison becomes worthy of at least a brief exploration.

If you've never seen Rosencrantz — it's a favorite of mine, and I recommend it without reservation — the play is a meta-textural, existential tragicomedy. The misadventures of its protagonists, minor supporting characters from Shakespeare's Hamlet, are informed by the audience's knowledge of their fate in their original source material. By comparing what the audience knows about the protagonists to what they think they know, Stoppard is able to ask a variety of questions about the meaning (or lack thereof) of life. Honestly, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is the highest form of fan fiction.

In a similar way, "The Greatest Story Never Told" is a more enriching episode if the audience is familiar with the character of of Booster Gold. Writer Andrew Kreisberg uses Booster, a character generally perceived as infuriatingly selfish, to define heroism within the DC Universe. What does it mean to be a hero when a common house fire is insignificant compared to a reality-warping magical disaster? Is heroism objective or subjective?

Sava's AV Club review doesn't explicitly call "The Greatest Story Never Told" recommended watching, but any time a televised cartoon for children can introduce deeper subjects for its young audience's consideration, it deserves a look. If it can do so with Booster Gold, it becomes must-watch television.

You can find the full review at AVClub.com.

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Last month Gabe Roth described what he'd like to see from a Booster Gold television show for iFanboy.com. I think the show he describes is pretty much the show that all Booster Gold fans want to see.

My fear is that the good folks at the network will get in there and start meddling. Not hard to imagine a bunch of guys with no comic book experience balking at the idea of a show centered on a character who isn't overtly "good" or formulaically fighting for truth, justice and the American way. That's not the Booster I want to see. My wish list? I want to see the full Booster costume in all its yellow and blue glory. I want to see an unashamed exploration of reluctant hero with unquenchable thirst for the spotlight. And I definitely want to see Booster's floating robot sidekick Skeets play a prominent role. I'm imagining Skeets as KITT from Knight Rider for a new generation.

As you might guess, I'm a big K.I.T.T. fan myself. To think that we could have a shot at talking S.K.E.E.T.S. ("Security Keeper, Emancipated Electronic Talking Series"?) toys lining shelves at Wal-Mart one day. I wonder if David Hasselhoff would be interested in guest starring as the Linear Man?

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