Booster Gold Creator Dan Jurgens To Write Solo Comic Featuring the Character

Dan Jurgens, who has written and/or drawn almost every solo Booster Gold solo adventure DC Comics have ever published since creating the hero nearly 30 years ago, will return to the character for DC Comics's Five Years Later event in September. Five Years Later, which spins out of the The New 52: Futures End miniseries Jurgens is co-writing and on which he serves as one of a number of artists -- is similar to DC's zero issues and villain issues, in that it is a line-wide event meant to commemorate the September launch of the New 52 following DC's Flashpoint event storyline. Like last year's Villains Month event which kicked off Forever Evil, the Five Years Later issues will feature 3-D covers. The Jurgens/Booster Gold connection was established in an interview with Newsarama in support of Saturday's Free Comic Book Day issue of Futures End. Asked whether Booster -- a character who comes from the future and served as a "Time Master" in his most recent series -- will appear in the upcoming story, which takes place in a dystopian near-future, Jurgens replied that he would.

"Right! So there's a Booster Gold book in September. I am writing it," Jurgens said. "And obviously, you've seen the MC Escher style poster that we have, and that's supposed to get a lot of people asking a lot of questions. And like Brian said, if you start to have a time travel story, you start to have these things happen and you look at the various characters that are involved, by the time we get through telling the story we have to tell, there has to be some logic to it, and all that – including Booster – comes into it." Booster Gold has been featured in two previous, ongoing series -- one written and drawn entirely by Jurgens, which introduced the character in the '80s, and one that launched with scripts from Geoff Johns and Jeff Katz and Jurgens on art following the events of 52. The latter ran for nearly fifty issues from 2007 until the New 52 relaunch in 2011. Jurgens drew more than thirty of those issues and wrote all but about 20. Even in the New 52, Jurgens has written more Booster than anybody else, having penned 12 issues of Justice League International featuring the character, even before Booster resurfaces in The New 52: Futures End. The event series, however, will likely be the first time Jurgens has had the opportunity draw his creation since the launch of the New 52. The character has been the subject of a number of recent rumors; two years or so ago, Arrow and The Flash producer Andrew Kreisberg put a Booster Gold pilot into development at Syfy. Despite repeated claims that the script is "almost finished," there is no credible evidence that the project has moved forward in that time. Booster Gold is one of a number of properties -- including Suicide Squad -- rumored to be in development at Warner Bros. for a low-to-mid-budget superhero film franchise. No one at Warner Bros. has publicly commented on those rumors. And there have been repeated claims that the character will come back to headline his own, ongoing series again. It's unclear from Jurgens's comments whether the upcoming issue is simply a one-shot, though, or the launch of something bigger. The final issue of DC's Forever Evil -- #7, which has been delayed and is now expected in May -- serves as the New 52 introduction of Ted Kord, the Bronze Age Blue Beetle and Booster's longtime best friend. Kord died in 2005's Countdown to Infinite Crisis, which celebrated the twentieth anniversary of the Crisis on Infinite Earths with a similar time- and universe-hopping event. The New 52: Futures End will conclude in 2015 -- right around the thirtieth anniversary of Crisis. Pressed as to whether Futures End might acknowledge that anniversary, the writer (and co-writer Brian Azzarello, with whom he was interviewed) were somewhat evasive, but promised there's...something...going on. "As we're doing this, it isn't a story that just climbs the hill, goes back down the hill, and has a single particular conclusion. There are a lot of ramifications that come from this, and a lot of wrinkles that come off of Futures End, and go, I think it's safe to say, beyond the nature of the project itself," Jurgens said. "We certainly are building and constructing something in mind, both for this story, and something that has a platform that we can build off beyond that." The New 52: Futures End #0 will be released on Saturday as DC Comics's Free Comic Book Day offering. The first weekly issue launches next Wednesday, May 7.