Episode Transcript
[00:00:06] Speaker A: You took time to.
[00:00:08] Speaker B: Oh, hey. Ah. Oh, hi. Greg's reading messages from Anne.
[00:00:12] Speaker A: Yes, I am.
[00:00:14] Speaker B: And I was doing research and I was putting Greg to sleep because we are on to Booster Gold number 24. And I've read 23 crossover.
Yeah, no, you read 20. We did 23 last week.
[00:00:26] Speaker A: That's why this one looks so familiar.
[00:00:29] Speaker B: Yeah, you are very confused.
[00:00:32] Speaker A: Usually I am like a Pokemon that has been poisoned.
[00:00:37] Speaker B: Do Pokemon get poisoned? Yeah, Dan, that's mean.
[00:00:41] Speaker A: They can get confused and turned around and then they can't battle.
[00:00:44] Speaker B: Is that gaseous guy?
[00:00:46] Speaker A: Gaseous guy?
[00:00:48] Speaker B: The one that looks like a giant fart. Is he the one that poisons?
He doesn't look like giant. He, like, has farts coming out of his edges.
[00:00:58] Speaker A: Some. Most. Most.
[00:00:59] Speaker B: Well, not most ghastly. Is it gastly? No, that's a ghost one.
[00:01:03] Speaker A: Well, there's a lot of ghost Pokemon, but yes, there are some that.
[00:01:07] Speaker B: Not the ghost Pokemon. I'm talking about the poison one that's, like purple and he's like, kind of round and like.
[00:01:12] Speaker A: I don't know all the Pokemon. Dan, what do you think I am?
[00:01:15] Speaker B: Yes, you do. You play poke. I used to know them because I played Pokemon Go with my dog. We go on walks and play Pokemon Go.
[00:01:21] Speaker A: Your dog plays Pokemon Go?
[00:01:23] Speaker B: She's really good at finding Pokemon. Wow, that's awesome. She's a little hunter.
[00:01:29] Speaker A: Yes. We covered this on last episode.
[00:01:31] Speaker B: She get very impatient when we was. She hunted Pokemon.
[00:01:35] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:01:37] Speaker B: We'd walk around Pacific Lutheran University's campus looking for Pokemon.
People loved her, so they'd pet her.
That was a long time ago. It was before the end times.
[00:01:48] Speaker A: Before the end times.
Well, you can do it again because it's still. It's back and it's popular.
[00:01:54] Speaker B: I. I do not need another addiction. I have enough addictions.
[00:01:58] Speaker A: That's true.
[00:02:00] Speaker B: So, like, we're gonna say Pokemon Go, like Booster Gold.
[00:02:03] Speaker A: Oh, man.
[00:02:04] Speaker B: Learning the law.
[00:02:06] Speaker A: Learning. Yes. All those things.
Learning the law.
[00:02:11] Speaker B: Seeing my baseball thing just lost.
[00:02:13] Speaker A: How now his. Everybody's back on that baseball thing again.
[00:02:17] Speaker B: Yeah, well, you know, it's an important thing.
You know what season.
[00:02:23] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:02:23] Speaker B: If you enjoy something, you should do it.
[00:02:25] Speaker A: You should.
[00:02:27] Speaker B: As long as it doesn't become your whole life like the stupid game.
And then at least you're admitting it becomes your whole life. Yeah, but it's all good.
We. I was doing some quick side research before the podcast, and Greg was falling asleep, and we're going to get into Booster Gold number 24.
And I can tell you this is A Millennium crossover. But I can tell you what we're not going to do.
[00:02:51] Speaker A: What's that?
Oh, definitely. What's that?
[00:02:55] Speaker B: Shut up.
I'm done.
That.
That was a Star Trek communicator noise.
[00:03:05] Speaker A: Oh, okay.
The sound when you get a microphone.
[00:03:08] Speaker B: I have a Star Trek communicator in the house.
[00:03:10] Speaker A: Oh, I see. I see.
[00:03:12] Speaker B: Mm.
This is a Booster Gold comic.
It is a Millennium Week 3 crossover, and I can tell you what we're not covering.
[00:03:20] Speaker A: What are we not covering?
[00:03:21] Speaker B: I'm not covering Millennium, and we're not covering the end of the Green Lantern corpse slash Green Lantern series.
[00:03:27] Speaker A: What?
[00:03:30] Speaker B: Why we are covering Booster Gold.
[00:03:31] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:03:32] Speaker B: Well, I don't have enough time to read all the Millennium books. That is a crossover. I've never taken the time to read.
I was. I've been told often that it's one. It's probably the last one you do take the time to read.
So I've just never done it.
I could do it. I mean, so. And here's in my comic book history. So this millennium came out in cover date January 88. So that would have been end of 87.
So I did not have enough money to buy my own comics in mass yet.
I wasn't getting a lot.
When Invasion came out, I had enough to buy the three Invasion books, but I didn't get a lot of the crossovers, I don't think.
No, I got them because that was La Gion time. I think there must have been a break. There must have been a year between.
I didn't start collecting Justice League International until in the 20s because I didn't have the money to buy them each month. And then at that time, Justice League JLI number one was worth a lot. And for a lot, I mean, like 10 bucks. And we didn't want to spend 10 bucks on a comic at that time.
[00:04:43] Speaker A: I mean, that's.
[00:04:44] Speaker B: That's.
[00:04:44] Speaker A: That's a week's worth of food right there.
[00:04:47] Speaker B: Yeah, it was.
So when you're buying comics for 75 cents or a dollar, this one was a dollar. 10 is a lot. And I could buy 10 legion back issues for that $10. I could buy old adventure comics books for like, two bucks, and I could buy five of those for one justice league number one.
So I never. I didn't buy it for a long time.
When I did eventually get one, I've got it signed by two of the three creators. Unfortunately, Keith passed away before I could get his signature on it, but.
And stunk because I was at a show in North Carolina A few years ago, and Damattis was there, and Keith was supposed to be there, and he got sick. And so I was going to have both of them signed at the same time.
And unfortunately, I just have one writer and one and the artist, and that's it. But this isn't jli. This isn't Justice League cast or Justice League International. Cast is a Booster Gold. But it does all fit in. Because what I was trying to explain is why Dan hasn't read this crossover. Well, it was just before I had money to buy more than one comic a month or a couple comics a month. So I was buying Legion of Superheroes. As we've told the story in the past, my dad would drive me to o' Leary's Books in Tacoma, Washington, which is no longer there. I would get one issue and I would read it on the way home, usually with the car light shining in the back of the car onto my book from other cars, trying to read the comic all the way home. And that's where I read the Legion of superheroes Millennium Story 2 parter. And so I knew that Millennium was a thing.
I've known it's a thing for a long time. I've just never gone back and read it.
[00:06:42] Speaker A: Now is your time.
[00:06:43] Speaker B: And now I get, oh, I don't have it. I don't own it. And I actually don't own it in.
In omnibus or any kind of that form either.
[00:06:53] Speaker A: Listeners, do you think Dan should go back and read all of Millennium beginning to end?
[00:06:57] Speaker B: Dan doesn't have time to read eight weeks of crossovers. And you could, if you need the
[00:07:03] Speaker A: time for things that you like.
[00:07:06] Speaker B: Exactly. I'm making the time for thing. I'm making time for things. Things that I like, which is not reading Millennium. I.
I have eight long boxes of comics over there to read.
[00:07:16] Speaker A: Do you like all the characters that are in that are in Millennium fond.
[00:07:21] Speaker B: I like some of them. Well, so let's.
That's kind of an awkward statement because.
So Millennium. All right, so Millennium was a story where the Manhunters come to prevent beings on Earth from evolving.
Now, with the help of the Manhunters, we're getting toward the end of the Green Lantern series. So we were just. That's what I was making Greg bored looking up. So Green Lantern. Green Arrow gets popular in 1972, but the book actually is canceled. So the very famous Denny o' Neill and Neal Adams run didn't have enough sales to keep it going, but it got a bunch of buzz, so they bring it back four years later in 1976, with Denny O' Neill writing and Mike Grell driving.
Hey, so that goes on.
And o' Neill is on and off the book until.
Well, no, O' Neill is on and off the book until around 1982.
And then Marv Wolfman is pretty consistently on the book for a minute.
And there was one more. I think Joey Cavallari is who we saw in between. And then you get Steve Englehart takes over the book in May of 1985. Cover date and 188.
At this point, there's a few issues before John Stewart has firmly replaced Hal Jordan as the main character of the book.
You get no Hal Jordan throughout. Crisis. You get John Stewart is the Green Lantern Crisis. And in May, on an. In issue 188, Englehart removes the mask from John Stewart. So John Stewart is just a person who is a Green Lantern and people know who he is.
And there you go. So there's some big changes by this time. The Green Lantern book has become Green Lantern Corpse and it's going to end a few months after this book.
We'd had a couple crossovers now. We'd had Crisis and we'd had Legends, and now we get the Green Lantern office's turn at a crossover with the idea of launching a new book called the New Guardians coming out of this. So those were the evolved beings that were there that were coming that the Manhunters were trying to prevent from spawning. So this is what this whole story is about. And again, I haven't read the whole story, but there you go.
And it was a weekly story, which is another reason I did not buy it, because with the other.
With a lot of the other crossover books, they were monthly books.
I could afford to get an extra book each month, but I could not afford to buy one book every week. Nor did I have a comic shop to go to or a parent that would take me to a comic shop, I should say, every week to go get said book. And still I started driving a couple years later.
So that also makes a big difference. Obviously, when I drove, as you are aware, we would go get comics all over the place.
[00:10:48] Speaker A: Yes, we would.
[00:10:49] Speaker B: And we did, because gas was a dollar a gallon. And even in my car that went about 8 to 11 miles per gallon could.
[00:11:01] Speaker A: It was still.
[00:11:01] Speaker B: Oh, I had a gas. I had a free gas card, too, so helped.
[00:11:04] Speaker A: I remember.
[00:11:07] Speaker B: So, yeah, I mean, just a. A big difference. So, yeah, I had somebody calling me out, you weren't as poor as you claim you were. And I was like, it was a friend of mine. I was like, yeah, I know. I said, where I wasn't is that I had a job every summer and I would save my money. And I was lucky. Here's where. I wasn't poor because my father had a business and he gave me a gas card from his business and I was able to use that for my car. So that actually, you know, looking back, was quite a benefit. I just didn't have money for anything else.
[00:11:44] Speaker A: Right.
[00:11:45] Speaker B: Which is true. I mean, you can vouch for that. Yeah, you were there, I was there.
[00:11:48] Speaker A: And I. Similar boat.
[00:11:51] Speaker B: Yeah. So. But we would go get comics and talk to comic people. And I was very frugal with my money, but not so frugal. I probably should have been saving it for college or something important. But I would save it up to buy comic books. So it's.
[00:12:06] Speaker A: Save your money, put it towards your education. It's important.
[00:12:10] Speaker B: But I didn't save it. That was the point. I spent every last penny I could get to scraped together on comics.
[00:12:15] Speaker A: Don't be like us.
[00:12:17] Speaker B: Yeah.
So Millennium was a book and Manhunter agents.
So the whole thesis is there are secret Manhunter agents, sleeper agents.
So sort of like a.
Oh, wait, what's that?
What's the movie where they try to kill the President, like the sleeper agents candidate. Yeah, it's kind of Manchurian Candidate, like. Right.
[00:12:44] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:12:45] Speaker B: Where these are all supposedly. They're sleeper agents. They've acted as people. They've done the whole time. I believe the Legion crossover was kind of ridiculous because the robot supposedly.
[00:12:57] Speaker A: Or the.
[00:12:57] Speaker B: Sorry, the Android supposedly, lived a thousand years into the future to try to stop the evolution later, which. It didn't make any sense.
[00:13:06] Speaker A: It didn't work.
[00:13:08] Speaker B: Yeah, well, it already happened.
[00:13:11] Speaker A: It's an Android. It can. It can live into the future, provided.
[00:13:14] Speaker B: Well, sure it can, but it. It didn't. The story didn't make a lot of sense and true for Legion. It came right after the really cool story we just. We read. It came right after the death of Superboy story, which made no sense in the flow at all.
You just had the. You just had them all declaring that they're going to go kill the time trapper. Yeah, literally. And then you have a two issue story about a robot from the past, a past trapper that they have to fight.
[00:13:48] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:13:48] Speaker B: So that.
And honestly, with Booster, I don't know that it interrupts the story because it's going to end at the story, because we have two issues left and both of them are Millennium crossovers.
So wow, that was a lot of setup.
[00:14:06] Speaker A: That was a lot of setup.
[00:14:07] Speaker B: Greg didn't even get. I wouldn't even let Greg be funny. I just, I know.
[00:14:10] Speaker A: You just ran right through it. I mean, but then again, I. You had prefaced for the 25 minutes you were preparing for all this. You said you weren't going to talk about Millennium.
[00:14:20] Speaker B: And there you go, listeners, after this,
[00:14:23] Speaker A: listeners, look what you got. You got something that Dan was committed to not talking about. He talked about it and he talked about it with such reverence that I couldn't crack a joke.
[00:14:36] Speaker B: Yep. And. And so out of Millennium comes a series called New guardians. It lasts 12 issues.
And so that should tell you how successful the Millennium.
[00:14:47] Speaker A: And like I said earlier, I mean, that's like, that's a standard TV series run right now. Sometimes like a limited series or whatever is 12 issue, 12 episodes. So, I mean, that's fair. It doesn't necessarily mean it's bad. It just doesn't. It just means that it was, it was supposed to be what it was.
[00:15:05] Speaker B: Well, we were talking before the podcast too, and I mentioned Steve Englehart was running the Green Lantern side of the house. And I mentioned that here he writes, he, you know, he contributes to Millennium and then he gets to write a new book out of that, the New Guardians. It lasts a grand total of 12 issues. So he loses Green Lantern corpse and then writes this other book and it's a corpse.
And eventually they relaunch Hal Jordan with Keith Giffen's Emerald dawn storyline. And then, and then he who Shall Not Be Named starts writing Green Lantern until Ron Mars takes over.
[00:15:45] Speaker A: So Ray Ron Mars.
[00:15:48] Speaker B: Yeah.
So kind of the end of Englehart's sort of relevance too, as a big creator at dc. It doesn't mean he doesn't do other stuff, but goes on.
[00:16:02] Speaker A: But not doing giant things.
[00:16:06] Speaker B: Not for. Not for doing a lot of DC stuff, the DC properties. Yeah, it looks like he was at Marvel in 83. He worked at.
Through Millennium at DC. It says 2005 goes back. He did a six issue Batman miniseries, Batman, Dark Detective. I don't know what he did in between. I assume he did some other sort of writing, probably television writing or something else.
Probably something I can figure out via Wikipedia.
[00:16:34] Speaker A: If I. The Wikipedias. The Internet is your friend, Dan.
[00:16:39] Speaker B: Yeah, if I, if I go to it. But yeah, it's just, it's an interesting sort of thing where he was writing, you know, kind of controlling the Green Lantern stuff and then this crashes and burns and.
Yeah, he wrote novels. Okay. So he wrote a series of young adult novels.
[00:17:04] Speaker A: What were they called?
[00:17:07] Speaker B: The DNA. DNA.
[00:17:13] Speaker A: I've never heard.
[00:17:14] Speaker B: Countdown to Flight. I've heard of that.
So, yeah, it's.
He was nominated for the best comic book writer by the Eagle Awards in 1979.
So.
And best continued story for his work on detective comics.
[00:17:35] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:17:36] Speaker B: 475 and 476.
So a lot there. He came back and did some stuff in the 2000s.
But yeah, I mean he did. He did a bunch of work for Malibu. There we go.
That's where he disappeared to. He did 23 issue run of some book called Nightman for Malibu.
[00:17:58] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:18:00] Speaker B: And. And a book called Strangers and Yeah, so there we go. There's the in between some. In between some Malibu comics. He did some topps Comics in 93. 94.
Jurassic Park, Raptor, Return to Jurassic Park.
He did the first four issues of X O Man and War for Valiant. 92.
[00:18:27] Speaker A: That's cool.
[00:18:29] Speaker B: So here's some cool stuff.
He did some Warren books. Not very many.
[00:18:35] Speaker A: Oh yeah.
[00:18:36] Speaker B: When he first started, he did three issues of Vampirella, a couple issues of Eerie, couple issues of Creepy. Okay, that's cool.
[00:18:47] Speaker A: Eerie and Creepy. Right up my alley.
[00:18:50] Speaker B: And some television credits. He's got a couple of GI Joe Extreme from 97. Of course it's extreme because it's in the 90s. Of course, I've never saw an episode of that series. I have never. Listener Jason can tell us about it.
[00:19:03] Speaker A: He might be able to tell us
[00:19:05] Speaker B: Street Fighter, the animated series, a couple episodes.
So there we go. That's what happened to him when he leaves. But yeah, I mean, you talk about. It's interesting with Englehart. I ask you, what's your favorite Steve Englehart story? And I kind of called him a Hammond Ager, which is not fair. He was nominated to be the best writer in comics in 1979, but sort of falls off here of the big two, at least for a while.
[00:19:31] Speaker A: What are you talking about? Malibu is right up there after.
[00:19:36] Speaker B: And it looks like he only wrote New Guardians number one and two.
So he launches that. So he may not be the reason it died.
[00:19:45] Speaker A: He just.
[00:19:46] Speaker B: He.
[00:19:46] Speaker A: He started it, but they wanted someone else to finish it.
[00:19:50] Speaker B: But he basically writes green lantern from 85 until 88 and then does the transition. New Guardians and is gone
[00:19:59] Speaker A: solid.
[00:19:59] Speaker B: I wonder.
I wonder if it's because Millennium crashed so badly.
[00:20:05] Speaker A: Maybe.
[00:20:07] Speaker B: And these are things I won't know until I next week when I grab one of my big history books out from Miami.
[00:20:12] Speaker A: But digs it out, finds out, lets us know.
[00:20:16] Speaker B: Well, all that said, I talked about this for 20 minutes, something I said I wasn't going to talk about, but I feel like there's some important setup there because all of a sudden, now this Green Lantern storyline is invading all of the other DC books for eight weeks.
Yeah. And you get crossovers. And.
And, yeah. I mean. And so if you were a book that came out monthly and it's an eight week maxi series, then you. If you were a book with a crossover, two of your books crossed over.
[00:20:46] Speaker A: Oh, my goodness.
[00:20:48] Speaker B: And this is. And the last two issues of Booster Gold were it. And so we get another Dan Jurgens and Ty Templeton collaboration, which is nice.
[00:20:59] Speaker A: It is nice.
[00:21:01] Speaker B: It is a pretty cover.
[00:21:02] Speaker A: It is very. It's. It's very cool.
[00:21:05] Speaker B: And Booster Gold's being attacked by his house.
[00:21:07] Speaker A: Oh, my gosh.
The AI has got him.
[00:21:13] Speaker B: Yeah. Finally. And so what?
[00:21:16] Speaker A: Finally, It's.
[00:21:17] Speaker B: It's interesting.
Well, everybody keeps saying it's going to get us.
[00:21:22] Speaker A: Booster called it.
[00:21:25] Speaker B: And we get a really weird M&M's ad.
Oh, yeah.
[00:21:31] Speaker A: Oh, interesting.
It's a big hand.
[00:21:36] Speaker B: It's wearing watches.
I don't know.
[00:21:39] Speaker A: It's time to eat your M M's.
[00:21:42] Speaker B: I mean, that is a way to advertise M M's. I guess.
[00:21:47] Speaker A: I suppose
[00:21:51] Speaker B: it must be Halloween time. Halloween, scary things.
We get a anatomically correctly drawn Booster Gold.
[00:22:00] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:22:04] Speaker B: And Booster's returning home.
He apparently helped Captain Adam out because Captain Adam's Manhunter was going after them. It doesn't say who. Captain Manhunter. Captain Manhunter.
[00:22:18] Speaker A: That is a.
[00:22:18] Speaker B: That's a character.
That would be a. That would be a book to collect Captain Manhunter.
I think I would like that book. Well, this book.
[00:22:29] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:22:29] Speaker B: It doesn't say who his Manhunter is. So if you're reading Captain Atom and you read this first on accident, then you would not. It wouldn't spoil the story.
[00:22:39] Speaker A: Could be anybody that.
[00:22:40] Speaker B: Barbara Kiesel. What a good editor.
[00:22:43] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:22:44] Speaker B: Not spoiling stuff.
And Booster's quite satisfied with himself because he feels like he helped Captain Adam and he tries to go home and his house shoots him. Yeah.
[00:22:55] Speaker A: Just blast Zach.
[00:22:59] Speaker B: And he. But he's speculating the whole time. He's like, well, I wonder. I wouldn't have a Manhunter because I pay everybody's paychecks.
Yeah. And the Manhunters. I don't know if I clearly explained this, but I. Because I think I got distracted by the Engelhardt talk. But the Manhunters were all I mentioned. They were androids, but they. The mandro. They were the mandroids. They were sleepy. They were sleeper cells. Right. I mentioned that. Like Manchurian candidates. So every, every one of the writers had to come up with a character to sacrifice, basically.
[00:23:32] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:23:33] Speaker B: As one of these Manhunters. And so most of the time, not going to sacrifice a major character to be a Manhunter. So I mentioned Legion sacrificed Laurel Kent, who was a long term academy student and descendant of Superman, supposedly.
And we saw, we saw the advertisement for Action Comics where they said, will it be Perry White, Lois Lane, or Lana? Language.
I don't know because I never read the issue. So we could, we could find out, speculate.
[00:24:08] Speaker A: It's okay.
[00:24:10] Speaker B: Oh, my speculation was I was going to guess that it was probably Lana Lang, because if there's no Superboy.
[00:24:18] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:24:18] Speaker B: Oh, there's no Lana Lane character. Not nearly as important.
[00:24:22] Speaker A: Not. Not important. Yeah.
[00:24:24] Speaker B: Yeah. So you don't have, you don't have years of, of Superman history to get rid of.
You just can get rid of the character. So, I mean, that's my assumption again, I, I don't know. I honestly don't know because I've never read it and I. You have read this before, but I did not know who was going to be the Manhunter here, though.
[00:24:43] Speaker A: It's a crazy turn when you find out it's Booster Gold.
[00:24:47] Speaker B: Yeah, I actually, I figured it out as soon. I mean, I'm gonna be real honest. I. I won't tell you yet, but I figured it out as soon as his house started attacking him. Because if, if you've been reading the Booster Gold book as we have, and the house starts attacking him, there was only one person in charge of all the renovations of the house because everybody else was gone.
[00:25:08] Speaker A: It was Skis, because Skis can hook into the house.
[00:25:13] Speaker B: And so when we find out it's Jack.
[00:25:16] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:25:19] Speaker B: Who spoiler is not.
Yeah. What I did miss about these first couple pages, when the house is attacking Booster, is Booster yelling at Jack to fix things? Because that was kind of funny in the past.
[00:25:30] Speaker A: Right.
[00:25:30] Speaker B: Jack is nowhere to be found.
Booster goes through a trap door.
His house starts attacking him again.
We give an advertisement for Tang soccer, which should not be something that is legal for children.
[00:25:45] Speaker A: Ang. Or soccer.
[00:25:48] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:25:48] Speaker A: Or Tang soccer.
[00:25:50] Speaker B: Tang Soccer, basically. I think, I don't know. It's. Is that Pele? That is Pele. Pele.
[00:25:58] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, time frame wise, I remember when I was a kid and playing with my Nerf soccer ball, I'd always yell Pele when I kicked Pele was everywhere.
[00:26:09] Speaker B: Yeah, you could do a. You could build a model here. I got some MPC models again.
You'd think a company advertising model cars
[00:26:20] Speaker A: would
[00:26:22] Speaker B: have a better advertisement.
[00:26:25] Speaker A: It's fine.
[00:26:27] Speaker B: This looks like something out of Mad magazine. I don't. Yeah, I don't know. It's weird you think they'd emphasize the model cars, but I guess if you build model cars, all the other little girls. This is just a creepy ad. I don't. I. It's.
Well, anyway, Booster goes into the depths of his house.
He's talking the whole time to nobody but himself. You think these be thought bubbles, but he's talking out loud the whole time.
[00:26:57] Speaker A: Well, I mean, you know, he's talking to the house.
[00:27:01] Speaker B: Well, I think it's best. He's got to entertain himself. Right. So.
[00:27:04] Speaker A: Right.
[00:27:06] Speaker B: And then we. We flip in, we flip the page and Dirk and Trixie are talking and Trixie's like, hey, Dirk, all of Booster Gold's money is gone. Who stole it?
And we know from last issue somebody was stealing all of his money.
[00:27:22] Speaker A: Somebody was.
[00:27:22] Speaker B: And then the power goes out. Oh man, they're in the dark. Well, the power's out because Booster Gold's knocked the power out for a second.
And Skeet shows up and is like, ah, it seems we're in a crisis. Uh oh.
[00:27:37] Speaker A: Uh oh.
[00:27:39] Speaker B: You don't want to be in a crisis in dc.
[00:27:42] Speaker A: No.
[00:27:42] Speaker B: Even as we speak, Booster is being attacked by the mansion's defense systems. So somebody's figured it out. Usually as Skeets.
Then we get an advertisement for all of the.
Is it Taito or Tato? You have to help me.
[00:27:57] Speaker A: Tato or Tight. Is it the games?
[00:28:00] Speaker B: Their games. Yeah.
Taito. You get an advertisement for all of their best Nintendo games, which I only know one of the.
So you get Elevator Action.
[00:28:10] Speaker A: That's a good one.
[00:28:12] Speaker B: The Legend of Cage, of course.
Renegade.
[00:28:18] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:28:20] Speaker B: And Arkanoid.
Yeah, all good games of one. I've heard of one. Renegade.
No.
[00:28:30] Speaker A: Elevator Action.
[00:28:32] Speaker B: No.
[00:28:33] Speaker A: Arkanoid.
[00:28:33] Speaker B: You know which one? Everybody's heard. I've.
[00:28:36] Speaker A: I've played all the other ones. They're great.
[00:28:38] Speaker B: Of course. Of course you have.
[00:28:39] Speaker A: Of course. I.
[00:28:41] Speaker B: The. We get a. We get another. We turn the page again. We get an advertisement for self defense classes, and we get again, the millennium checklist here. So we've got.
[00:28:50] Speaker A: You know how to.
[00:28:51] Speaker B: Millennium? Oh yeah. Well, I mean. And think about too. Like, I know Crisis was a big poll, right? Um, so. But Crisis you got over the year, right? So you know, you could buy each Month. The Crisis books.
[00:29:05] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:29:07] Speaker B: Well, here. To keep up, you had to buy new books each week. So the first week you had. If you wanted to keep up with Millennium, you had to have the money to buy Millennium, Firestorm, Flash, Justice League International, Outsiders, and Wonder Woman a lot.
In week two, you had to buy Millennium number two, Batman, Blue Beetle, which that series is going to end, too. Spoiler.
Legion 42, Secret Origins 22, Superman 13, and Young All Stars number eight.
It's just a lot. And in week three, where we're at, you had to buy Adventures of Superman 436, Booster Gold 24, Corpse 220, and Infinity Inc.
Man number 46.
[00:29:48] Speaker A: That's.
That is a lot of books, though. I. I get it.
[00:29:52] Speaker B: I get.
[00:29:53] Speaker A: I understand.
[00:29:54] Speaker B: And week four. Yeah. Well, here's your month, too. Millennium 4, Teen Titan, Spotlight 18, Action 596, Captain Atom 11, Detective 582, Suicide Squad 9, Specter Number 10. So that's 1, 2, 3. So that's what, five books the first week?
[00:30:10] Speaker A: So many.
[00:30:11] Speaker B: 11 books.
And then we've got 16 books. 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, some minimum. And some of those are direct only books. Legion and Cap. And so that's a minimum of dollar per book. But some books are 150.
[00:30:29] Speaker A: Right.
[00:30:29] Speaker B: Or 1 25. That's a lot of money.
[00:30:32] Speaker A: You're spending a lot on books that you may or may not like. But you might, like I said, you might like some of the characters, so you might do it, but you might not.
[00:30:41] Speaker B: And it just wasn't. And from what I understand, because I haven't read it, but what I've been told is it wasn't a great story either. So this is not the best way to hook people into your books either.
And then when you grab a book too, I think that some of the feeling of.
Of is similar to the feeling, I think, in.
What was that after Civil War when they did the. The scroll?
Oh, the scrolls were everywhere. Scrolls were in Marvel.
[00:31:14] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:31:14] Speaker B: I mean, this is a similar failing, right? It's like, well, you know, all these scrolls are here. So one of these characters is a scroll you've been interacting with for months has been a scroll. And it, you know, it's the same trope in pro wrestling too. Like when somebody turns on somebody, but they turn on them after they've been their tag team partner the whole match. Which never makes sense to me. Like, now, if they're building up tension or something like that, that's one thing.
But just like out of the blue. Oh, they wrestled the whole match together, and now you're going to beat him up? Like, if you were there, why wouldn't you beat him up at the start of the match?
[00:31:52] Speaker A: I mean, because you're. You're. You got to get through the first round of beatings first. You can't just turn heel at the right at the beginning because.
[00:32:01] Speaker B: Right.
[00:32:01] Speaker A: You got to get through those other opponents, man.
[00:32:04] Speaker B: So if it's out of disgust or something, you know, yeah, that's one thing. But if it's to turn heel to partner with the other guys, why wouldn't you have just done that to start?
[00:32:14] Speaker A: True.
And.
Oh, well, honestly, though, I mean, you see that with, like, in.
I want to say, like, in a.
My brain has. My brain has broken.
Anyways, continue.
[00:32:33] Speaker B: Well, Game of Thrones, I'm sure that
[00:32:36] Speaker A: was just a bunch of turning and turning and turning.
[00:32:38] Speaker B: Benedict Arnold.
[00:32:40] Speaker A: Yeah, well, yeah, true, true.
[00:32:43] Speaker B: But this idea, the Manchurian Candidate idea, the. There's a sleeper.
I. I think Manchurian Candidate, though, is such a good movie because, you know that's the bad guy.
[00:32:53] Speaker A: Right?
[00:32:54] Speaker B: Right.
And you're watching. You're. You're, like, from the perspective you're stressing, because you're anticipating what's going to happen. Right.
[00:33:01] Speaker A: When. When. When is he going to turn?
[00:33:04] Speaker B: Right. Whereas this is just, like, the mystery is, well, who is going to be the bad guy in the group?
And now we've got to figure out a reason they were a Manhunter the whole time, and we got to figure out a reason why no man stops the Manhunters or can defeat them.
[00:33:24] Speaker A: Is there androids or Mandroids?
Captain Manhunter.
[00:33:29] Speaker B: So. And then what happened to the other Manhunter
[00:33:35] Speaker A: from the book before?
[00:33:37] Speaker B: Yeah, that was in the. The Manhunter book.
[00:33:40] Speaker A: No, he got hunted.
[00:33:43] Speaker B: Maybe.
Was he also an Android?
[00:33:47] Speaker A: Maybe. Maybe he was. He was waiting, lying in wait. He was also hunting Daunters.
[00:33:55] Speaker B: It's possible. Well, anyway, the Mandre Beast Gold finds out there's a whole fortress beneath his house.
[00:34:03] Speaker A: What the heck?
So he's got all this real estate.
[00:34:08] Speaker B: Yeah. And then as he's fighting, the Manhunter appears in a. An image.
This one. This book has been well read, by the way.
[00:34:17] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
It's like a hologram.
[00:34:22] Speaker B: This is when I got out of a dollar Men.
[00:34:25] Speaker A: Best kind.
Yep.
[00:34:29] Speaker B: And, yeah, there's a hologram. And he's taunting him while Trixie gets back into the house, is looking around. Booster busts in. She's like, oh, my gosh. What'd you do? To the floor and he's like, I think it's been great. And she tells him, you're broke. All of your bank accounts have been great. Drained. Booster Gold International is empty. In fact, you're even in deep debt now.
[00:34:49] Speaker A: Oh, no.
[00:34:50] Speaker B: Skeets appears and they're all headed in and they're gonna get that darn Mackenzie Garrison who Booster just hired. Yeah.
[00:34:57] Speaker A: Because it's all Max fault.
[00:35:00] Speaker B: And.
And. And she's just standing there and says, yeah, thank you. I turned on the lights for you.
Oh, and then there's a zit.
[00:35:09] Speaker A: Zit. Zit.
[00:35:11] Speaker B: Hey, that's a. It's an advertisement for the oxygen. The. Yeah, the Oxy 10.
[00:35:16] Speaker A: Yeah. Get yourself clean.
Cheese on.
[00:35:20] Speaker B: And that's so just like the last few issues, we still have the Oxy advertisement, except it's just written into the text here.
[00:35:26] Speaker A: Right there. So that's it.
[00:35:29] Speaker B: And there's a Manhunter standing there.
[00:35:31] Speaker A: Oh, damn.
[00:35:32] Speaker B: And they hear the voice and they're like, that's Dirk Davis.
[00:35:35] Speaker A: Oh, Dirk. He is a jerk.
[00:35:39] Speaker B: I was really liking the story where he's fighting with the house.
[00:35:43] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:35:44] Speaker B: Then we get to page here 13. Because there are page numbers in this book. Is all books should have page numbers so you have something to reference.
[00:35:50] Speaker A: Okay.
Some people like it, some people don't. It's an opinion.
[00:35:54] Speaker B: Yeah, and it's not an opinion, it's a fact.
Just like, you know, I'm sure it's raining robot parts.
The story of Alex.
[00:36:04] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:36:04] Speaker B: And his reigning.
[00:36:05] Speaker A: Has no page numbers just for you.
[00:36:07] Speaker B: Yeah, that's numbers.
[00:36:10] Speaker A: Well, that's what Brett said. He was like, I'm not going to do page numbers for Dan because.
[00:36:13] Speaker B: Yeah, and we'll get beautiful Widelli Art of Robot Parts falling out of a sky.
[00:36:19] Speaker A: Yeah, it's just raining parts. And then no page numbers because he knows what you like.
[00:36:26] Speaker B: And by the way, that book is on Kickstarter. We'll give you a link to that. We give you a link every week. If you hit that link and hit like, Notify me when the book launches. You'll find out when this book launches. First in line, you'll find out what all the robot parts all about. But we're back to Millennium, where there's other robot parts.
Well, there's not any parts yet. There's robots.
[00:36:48] Speaker A: It's just robots.
[00:36:51] Speaker B: Anyway, we get this long thing, we find out that Dirk has robbed him blind.
He wants to stop the Justice League from helping these aliens elevate people.
Trixie is now crying because she said she was actually starting to Like Dirk, which also is annoying.
[00:37:11] Speaker A: Fall in love with Dirk.
[00:37:14] Speaker B: I was. Yeah. And then he. Then the Manhunter grabs her, and Booster's like, yeah, take her hands off her.
[00:37:23] Speaker A: That makes me wonder about his child
[00:37:26] Speaker B: Dirks. Yes, well, it does present issues when supposedly the Manhunters have been sleeper cell robots, but then they have children, and what my response would be is, it's a small wonder to find out.
[00:37:44] Speaker A: Nice.
[00:37:46] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:37:47] Speaker A: Nice, nice. Well done, Dan.
[00:37:50] Speaker B: I appreciate that. And see, every once in a while, I've got a reference.
[00:37:54] Speaker A: He gets one. Yeah, well, he's been waiting on that one all day.
[00:38:01] Speaker B: Basically, the Manhunter is like, nobody's gonna own me.
We get an advertisement with.
We get a full page advertisement with some art by one Mr. Grell.
[00:38:12] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:38:14] Speaker B: Advertising. Green Arrow book.
[00:38:16] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:38:16] Speaker B: On sale monthly.
No offense to the Millennium Series, but I think I would rather be reading that book right now.
[00:38:26] Speaker A: Oh, the.
[00:38:26] Speaker B: Yeah, the.
[00:38:27] Speaker A: Yeah. Green Arrow book.
[00:38:29] Speaker B: Yeah. If you. Yeah. I mean, and honestly, if you were.
If you are a comic fan of a certain age, you would want to be reading that book. Another book I couldn't afford to buy until much later.
And I wanted that book because it took place in Seattle.
[00:38:45] Speaker A: Yeah. Why wouldn't you want it?
[00:38:48] Speaker B: And it had beautiful Mike Grell art.
[00:38:50] Speaker A: Mm.
[00:38:52] Speaker B: I couldn't afford it. Alas. I could not afford it. So.
[00:38:56] Speaker A: So good.
[00:38:57] Speaker B: Well, the Manhunter does his. He rolls a 20 on his.
His Athletics.
[00:39:03] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:39:03] Speaker B: And does some flips and they fly outside. And then Booster's like, you know what?
We're gonna fight for a minute. But you know what? You're right. I think we are making mistake. We should not let aliens evolve people on our planet. In fact, I don't remember of any of this in the future or anything. And I want my money back anyway. And so I'll partner up with you. But first I'm gonna hit you when Dirk the Jerk Manhunter is like, good, good. If you hadn't done that. If you hadn't hit me, I would have doubted your motives. And Trixie's like, you're joining the Manhunters. You've sold out for money.
So I believe that's the end of Trixie and Booster's relationship. Probably.
[00:39:50] Speaker A: It's. I mean, that's Booster in a nutshell, right? I mean, he's all about that cash, apparently.
[00:39:57] Speaker B: And he asked Skeets if there is a record in your history bank of the Guardians advancing the cause of man.
And Skeet says, nope.
So it makes sense for Booster to oppose it then.
And he's going to join Dirk. And so Dirk is like, well, what I need you to do is hold a press conference.
So they get a press conference. Booster shows up. We get an advertisement for direct comics and games in Los Angeles, California.
Getting more and more of these. Com lists. I love these. This period where you get the list of books that you can just buy.
You could get the second printing of GI Joe for $3.
A number two deal. You get issue three through five and issue seven for $12 a piece.
[00:40:51] Speaker A: Steal.
[00:40:52] Speaker B: Where we're starting to get some of those things to come up. Transformer is much cheaper.
You could get the first issue of Wolverine for 325.
[00:41:03] Speaker A: Oh, wow.
[00:41:05] Speaker B: You could buy a whole bunch of things. Speed Racer.
[00:41:09] Speaker A: Oh, that's a good book. I really like that one. I'm not joking. That's not me being sarcastic. I thought those books were awesome.
[00:41:16] Speaker B: Was that a comico book?
[00:41:18] Speaker A: Yeah, I believe so.
[00:41:20] Speaker B: If I.
[00:41:20] Speaker A: If I'm correct, did the same. They did Gumby too.
[00:41:26] Speaker B: Here's something you could get.
[00:41:27] Speaker A: These are 3D, some of them.
[00:41:30] Speaker B: Here's. You could get. You could get the third printing of Turtles number one for $7.50.
You get the fourth printing for $2.50. You get the first printing of Mutant Ninja Turtles number two for $35.
[00:41:49] Speaker A: I mean, steel, would you like to
[00:41:52] Speaker B: go back in time?
[00:41:53] Speaker A: Yeah, I know.
[00:41:55] Speaker B: I got the first printing of number four for $6.
And here is. Here's. Here's where it's not such a bargain.
You get the first five issues of ElfQuest for one.25 a piece.
[00:42:10] Speaker A: What do you mean that's not a bargain? Travis would be all over that.
[00:42:14] Speaker B: Well, you can buy them now for 50 cents a piece.
Another not bargain. The first issue of Doom Patrol. Two dollars. Yeah. No, you can buy that for a quarter.
So those later Doom Patrol issues come.
[00:42:29] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:42:29] Speaker B: Then they. Then they start to get expensive.
Let's see. Yeah. So here we go.
This week in how to buy comics, you get Jam Dematis and Paris Collins and Carl Kiesel relaunching forever, people.
So more Kirby stuff.
[00:42:52] Speaker A: Dangerous place.
[00:42:53] Speaker B: That's cool.
6 issue, new format miniseries. And that was that new format. So that was coming out after the Baxter Paper stuff. So the new format is post Baxter Paper, but all direct sale, all nicer books. Yeah, I believe the whole Green Arrow series was new format.
The new Guardian series that came out on Millennium with new format.
Also like. Well, I'll talk about it after we get through the last couple pages of Booster. But yeah, this is going to be a short podcast because there's not a lot of substance in this book for us to talk about. Maybe we should have done both books, but we wanted to dedicate a whole episode to the.
To the end of the Booster series. So Booster holds a press conference and he's like, yeah, the Justice League is wrong.
They don't want to elevate these special earthlings to near godhood.
He's going to stand against them with the Manhunters.
Dirk the jerk is just happy in the background.
And Booster says it's going to be. Hey, it's going to be nice sitting on the right side of the fence for once.
Oh, and we've got continued in the pages of Millennium.
[00:44:03] Speaker A: That's where it's at.
[00:44:06] Speaker B: And then we get to letter pages, and we've got a TM maple page and a TM maple letter and a te. Bouncy letter.
[00:44:13] Speaker A: Yeah, Gold.
[00:44:20] Speaker B: And we do get a letter from a Matt Cody.
[00:44:24] Speaker A: Oh, I thought you're going to read a letter from me.
[00:44:26] Speaker B: And there's a letter from. Oh, no.
We get a letter from Matt Cody of 1537 Upper Parkway South.
Wa wat.
Wa watosa.
[00:44:45] Speaker A: Wawatosa, Wisconsin.
[00:44:47] Speaker B: Okay. You lived there? I don't know.
[00:44:49] Speaker A: I did, yes.
[00:44:51] Speaker B: Five, three, two, one, three.
Dear Dan, I guess Booster Gold is doomed after all. A recent comics Buyer's Guide has told me that with issue number 25, BO be gone due to the fact that you don't like the way Booster Gold is going. I strongly disagree. Booster Gold is awesome. Please say Booster Gold. I don't want a revival. I want Booster Gold now.
[00:45:13] Speaker A: Now.
[00:45:14] Speaker B: And Jurgen says, sorry, gang, but it's true. Our next issue, Booster Gold, will also be the last. More on that in the next month's letter column. We've received a lot of very good letters protesting the cancellation of the title, but at this point, it's just too late.
So how do we wind up the series and next issue? Booster a traitor. Has Superman been right about this character all along? Read Millennium number seven and then be here for the end. What do you need to know, Dan Jurgens?
And we didn't read Millennium, so we did not. We don't know that's part of the challenge, but yeah, I mean, I don't know.
This book starts out fun and becomes a real bummer.
[00:46:04] Speaker A: Yeah, well, as some. As most. I mean, things that are short lived do.
[00:46:12] Speaker B: I don't think that it's hard because, like, this is what I'm going to get into, like with Marvel, Civil War and stuff. Now we got the superheroes taking sides.
I don't think it's out of character for Booster. Booster to stick up for his money.
[00:46:27] Speaker A: Yeah, that's true.
[00:46:30] Speaker B: But it does seem out of character for Booster to oppose progress because he
[00:46:36] Speaker A: comes from the future where progress was there. But he might not like the future that he's, that he's from. So he might want things to change, maybe in a different way, so that his future doesn't happen.
[00:46:48] Speaker B: He's also suffered a lot of loss lately. So, you know, it could be a reason he's out of character.
I, I did. I, I am okay with the choosing of Dirk for this. Simply because Dirk had access to the house.
There's clear explanations of how he could have been setting all these things up. Yeah. It's not out of the realm of possibility that Dirk the jerk could have been the sleeper agent the whole time manipulating Booster Gold for his own ends.
[00:47:14] Speaker A: Right.
[00:47:16] Speaker B: I mean, the small wonder Child makes it a little bit weird. So if you. That's why, kid.
[00:47:20] Speaker A: Well, that's why he didn't want the, he, he wanted his daughter back so bad. He didn't want his, his small, his small wonder robot daughter to get in the wrong hands because, you know, all of a sudden they, they find out she's not a real girl. And it's, it's like, oh, wow, we've got like all this crazy technology going on. What are we going to do with it? Doesn't want to, doesn't want to get it out of control. Right.
[00:47:45] Speaker B: So that makes sense.
Yeah. But at the same time, I think it's also, it's also difficult to reconcile. And this is, again, the challenge of Millennium. It's difficult to reconcile everything that's happened with the character over the last 24 issues to our 23 issues to rewrite them into this weirdness.
[00:48:08] Speaker A: But, I mean, I think we both can agree he was the right choice. It's not going to be any of the other characters.
[00:48:15] Speaker B: Well, where is Jack?
[00:48:17] Speaker A: I don't know.
[00:48:18] Speaker B: I actually think Jack could have been a great choice.
[00:48:21] Speaker A: Jack could have been a great choice,
[00:48:22] Speaker B: but I mean, Jack's not referenced in the issue, never shows up in the issue. Jack's hardly been around. It could have explained a lot of things.
Jack would have had the intelligence to siphon all the bank accounts and to
[00:48:36] Speaker A: know all the boosters.
[00:48:38] Speaker B: Yeah.
So.
[00:48:40] Speaker A: Man, that. Darn it, Dan, we should write a letter.
[00:48:45] Speaker B: We should write a letter from. But then people would know where we live because it'd be published there.
[00:48:50] Speaker A: Oh, man. Well, that's why we use a P.O. box.
[00:48:54] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:48:55] Speaker A: No one knows at that point. They just can't bite your P.O. box until you get there. You're like, you jerk.
[00:49:02] Speaker B: So, yeah. I mean, we're nearing the end of Booster Gold. It's sad.
Trixie is pretty much left of the supporting cast then.
[00:49:10] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:49:11] Speaker B: If Rip Hunter's not around, if Jack's not around, I guess you have Mac, but Mac's hardly been there, so we don't know anything about the character. Yeah.
[00:49:21] Speaker A: Matt kind of doesn't really fit into the.
[00:49:25] Speaker B: I don't think, you know, at least for now.
[00:49:28] Speaker A: For now?
[00:49:29] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:49:32] Speaker A: It's.
[00:49:32] Speaker B: This is a character that will be used again, I believe, but just not right now. Well, no, they don't. They don't use her again. Actually, I'm wrong. They use a. They. Re. They.
That's not the name of the character in Justice League, is it?
[00:49:48] Speaker A: I know.
[00:49:48] Speaker B: That's the Conglomerate. They repurpose a different they. They do a version of her. She gets reversioned, but they. Reversioned.
[00:49:55] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:49:56] Speaker B: Kind of like.
Yeah. Kind of like Tom Paris in Star Trek is a reversioning of that character from the McKee episode, right? Yeah, yeah, it's. Or not the McKee episode. Sorry. From the. The one where Wesley Crusher and they all crash the ships.
The Academy. And then they get him. He's a. They don't have this. It's. It's basically the same character, but it's not. It's. It's kind of the same thing with that conglomerate DC Fair. They basically have the MacKenzie Gore character, or Mackenzie, whatever her name is, but it's a different. The leader is different, but it's the same. Same idea. It's. It's like a business rival of Booster Gold, basically, kind of.
So Booster Gold was a member. Claire Montgomery. That's the name. She becomes a. She's a rival of Maxwell Lord. I take that back.
[00:50:52] Speaker A: Oh, okay.
[00:50:54] Speaker B: Created by Giffen and dematteus, but kind of the same idea.
[00:50:58] Speaker A: Similar idea. Yeah.
[00:51:00] Speaker B: Yeah. And then Booster Gold joins with her.
So. Yeah, it's.
Yeah, it's.
It's a thing.
But, yeah, I mean, we got.
Yeah. I mean, I think it's why people didn't like Millennium, honestly.
[00:51:24] Speaker A: Maybe so.
Because too many strings untied and too many boxes of mystery opened up.
[00:51:35] Speaker B: Well, yeah. I mean, you are.
It's not. Well, and. And they're ending the series. Right. So if people knew that already.
[00:51:45] Speaker A: Yeah. They're like, I hate this.
[00:51:47] Speaker B: Yeah. And now you're ending the series. And then you're forcing me to buy these two books to loosely tie with the giant crossover book that's coming out over eight weeks
[00:51:59] Speaker A: that I probably don't want to read.
[00:52:02] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a bummer.
And then.
And I do remember too, thinking at the time, right. Like, with Justice League. And so, you know, obviously Giffen writing it, and so I would have bought it if I had enough money, and I did eventually get it. But one of the things I thought, you know, initially before reading this as a kid was like, what? So now in the Justice League, you're just taking these two characters with unsuccessful books and throwing them into the Justice League. So then why would I want to read that?
Yeah, I mean, you had. This is the whole notion, oh, there's two failed characters, Blue Beetle and Booster Gold. We're throwing them in the Justice League. And great.
So now you're. Now you want me to buy the team book that has the failed characters thrown from the books that failed.
And why would I do that?
[00:52:55] Speaker A: You wouldn't, most likely.
[00:52:57] Speaker B: Yeah. Under that logic. And I didn't. Of course, they become. It becomes one of the best writing things in the history of DC Comics with the blue and gold.
[00:53:06] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:53:07] Speaker B: So, but at the time, like, why.
Why would you do that? And that's the other thing, too.
It did sort of almost feel like they.
I don't know if you feel like this way, but I think it felt like the Justice League was. And it was. We've talked about in the past, but spare parts, kind of.
[00:53:32] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:53:33] Speaker B: And the spare parts are the reason they were able to do it so well.
[00:53:39] Speaker A: Pull it all together, make a thing.
[00:53:42] Speaker B: Yeah, but at this. But at the same. That's why they were able to. Because they had the freedom to write with it. So it ended up being a great thing.
But on the initial. On the initial thought process, like, sounds awful, doesn't it? Like, here's our plan to sell books. We're going to cancel two books and we're going to take the characters from those books and we're going to put them in cool book.
Yeah, we're going to put them in the Justice League. Yeah. So that sounds.
That sounds not great.
And so, yeah, Blue beetle lasts also 24 issues.
[00:54:24] Speaker A: Maybe that was the plan all along.
[00:54:27] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't think that was the plan all along. They wanted both these. Well, Blue Beetle specifically was out of crisis. Right. They wanted. They were going to use the Charlton heroes, the Charlton action heroes. So Blue Beetle they were going to use. They had Captain Atom out Right. They had Blue Beetle out.
They wanted to use them. And that's why the Watchmen ended up not being the actual Charlton heroes, ended up being analogs, because they actually wanted to use the property.
[00:54:54] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:54:57] Speaker B: So, I mean, they tried and. Yeah. But Booster. I mean, this is sad because, I mean, we'll talk more about it next week, but I think it's cool to let a new character launch.
Obviously, it's capitalism, so you have to sell books to. For things to keep going.
And I really felt this book, once it hit its stride in it in the teens, you had that blip there with the Cheshire and Hawk and weird scientist storyline, which was not great.
But, you know, I love the adventure in the future. You had some potential with the whole gold star stuff that could have lasted longer. Obviously, if you're not ending the book, you're probably not killing Goldstar that soon.
[00:55:42] Speaker A: No.
[00:55:43] Speaker B: Maybe she's fated to die, but I doubt it's that quickly. And then you had that supporting cast we talked about, and you had a cool concept for a book moving forward, and then you rug. Pull it through editorial and cancel the book.
[00:55:56] Speaker A: Yeah.
And lose all that momentum.
[00:56:03] Speaker B: And for a character who people didn't think would last as long. Right.
[00:56:06] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean. But I guess it did catapult the character into Justice League and into the Blue and Gold. So without doing all this, you don't get those things. So, I mean.
[00:56:19] Speaker B: Yeah. Dan Jurgen still created the character.
[00:56:22] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:56:23] Speaker B: And the concept.
But I mean, let's be honest, it was not Dan Jurgen's writing that carried the character. It was Giffen and Damatis.
[00:56:31] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:56:33] Speaker B: And it. Yeah. And the. And obviously to the.
The. The Maguire art
[00:56:41] Speaker A: bringing it all together.
[00:56:43] Speaker B: Yeah. The facial. The facial expressions and the way they were able to do that. And it was just the Kevin Maguire art was key to the Justice League, too.
And that was obviously. I mean, you got the famous first issue with all the heads looking up and the snark on Guy Gardner's face, but.
[00:57:06] Speaker A: Right.
[00:57:06] Speaker B: Maguire could.
McGuire drew and draw. And doesn't just draw and draws. He draws a Drew. I don't want to imply that he is dead. Draws faces in a way that are very expressive.
And it allowed writers like Giffen and DeMattis, who are the script heavy. Right. To get away with a lot of dialogue because he draws expressive dialogue. And that's, you know, it is really good. And you get some really good storytelling. And you. You. But you also get. I mean, the big change for the two characters was the.
The buddy team.
[00:57:53] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:57:55] Speaker B: And I Guess too. In, in, in, in, in breaking down because that was the end of the Justice League storyline, right? Break down. Yeah, break down and breaking down Booster too. You get the impetus for all of the. You get the impetus for all of the schemes that Blue Beetle and Booster Gold try to do to make money again. Because Blue Beetle has trouble with his corporation and Booster Gold broke. And so they need a paycheck and then they're always trying to get back.
[00:58:23] Speaker A: So you got one guy that, that, that can handle a business will.
Okay. Pair up with a guy who's not. I mean he, he's a good schemer and he gets, he had money together.
[00:58:39] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, I think the one was neither of them could handle a corporation. Blue Beetle was a scientist. Right. And he was making money off his inventions, but he didn't know how to run a company.
And then you've got Booster who is making money off his face and had other people running his company.
And really remember in this story, Booster Gold's company started making money when he was in the future, when he was gone, when Dirk reinvested everything.
[00:59:02] Speaker A: Yeah, well, I mean, he's a computer. Of course he's going to know what to do.
[00:59:07] Speaker B: Yeah. That's when they. Well, he's AI. Right. Yeah. Right. Yeah, definitely. No, you can't go wrong. In fact, I highly recommend, if you're going to do some investing, just ask Chat GPT where to invest your money.
[00:59:20] Speaker A: Growth.
[00:59:24] Speaker B: Yeah, I prefer to sit down with
[00:59:25] Speaker A: a real person so they can make mistakes and then I can be mad at them.
[00:59:30] Speaker B: I don't understand why. I feel like you should.
I feel like you should just let ChatGPT take care of the work for you.
[00:59:38] Speaker A: Yeah, no, I mean, I like to make my own mistakes with my money.
[00:59:44] Speaker B: So. Who. Who. We'll do the wrap up issue. We'll do the wrap up next time. But we've got 24 issues out. Who was your favorite character in Booster Gold? That's not Booster Gold or Skeets.
[00:59:56] Speaker A: My favorite character in all of this.
You know, I would say coming out of his supporting cast is it. It's, it's definitely.
It's got to be either Trixie or rit. For me, I, I like Trixie. Really humanizes a lot of stuff, I think, in certain ways. And really she's kind of like his conscious.
Like, you know, Skeets is like his, his conscious too, but more like a don't be dumb, do this and, and Trixie is like the a.
Let me, you know, you're, you're, you're out of place and, you know, you're making bad moves and stuff like that and calls him out on a lot of things. So I. I think that's really good.
I definitely like Rip, too, because I.
I think, like, he's. He's just interesting, and I don't feel like we got enough of him.
[01:00:56] Speaker B: Yeah. You know, I'm with you there. Yeah, we didn't. And Jack as well. I like Jack.
Jack was kind of the comic foil. I create stuff and sometimes it breaks, and he's kind of your wacky inventor character. I liked Jack, but, yeah, I'm with you on Trixie. I think Trixie is the moral center of the story. And the more they got away from Trixie there toward the end, the less we saw that. It would have been interesting to see the rivalry between Mac and Trixie if the stories had gone forward, where, if you're. If you know, you're getting rid. So let's say the stories were going forward, and I think that's probably why Mac is introduced. Right.
Because if this. If the books continue and you know how you have to get rid of Dirk, then you have to have another manager there. Right.
And Mac is very clumsily brought in. It's just like, oh, I hired this person.
[01:01:47] Speaker A: Yeah. Everybody's shocked. Like, why?
[01:01:49] Speaker B: Yeah. So, you know, Juergens probably knows he's losing that. The other character. Right.
So if we had gone through, it would have been nice to see, like, the origin there, like, how she got there, the rivalry between the two.
[01:02:03] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:02:04] Speaker B: But. Yeah, I mean, it's. But we don't get any of that. And that character is done forever.
[01:02:11] Speaker A: Well, I mean, like, you're saying, too. I mean, you've got basically Booster stuck between two very centering people in his world. That one is like, hey, I'll be your moral center. Let me tell you what it is. And the other one's like, hey, I know the things that you want, and I'm going to help you get them.
Which is all of the business stuff under wraps and your fame and everything else. Your profile. And now he's really, you know, if they did carry that on. Yeah. The story could have been very interesting to see all that unfold as those two either butt heads. It's like having a devil and an angel on Booster shoulder.
Which one is he going to listen to?
[01:02:59] Speaker B: Well, and I think. Yeah, yeah. And that would have been enjoyable, but we don't get any of that. And we get what Booster Gold became, which was a very different character than it was Written in this book.
[01:03:13] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:03:13] Speaker B: Well, I should say very different. I shouldn't be say very different.
I think Blue Beetle makes a much more drastic change than Booster does from his solo book to what he becomes.
Whereas Booster is still.
He's out there to get his pre toasted bagels.
[01:03:31] Speaker A: He's gonna get. He becomes like. At least in his own book series, he is not a punchline because you see him doing things and yeah, he might step in it once in a while, but you know, it's. It's laughable for a moment, but yet he's, he's competent and well, I love
[01:03:52] Speaker B: the whole notion that he has to be a punchline because nobody's supposed to know who he is. Yeah, he's like the hero that time for God. Right? That storyline was. Was great.
And the. What they're doing with him now, I mean, still the story is unfolding, but what they've been doing with him in the current DC Comics storyline is fine. I think it's a good use the character too, I would say. Jurgens tries to make him really powerful again. We mentioned this before on other podcasts, but tries to make him powerful during Death of Superman.
You know, I stood toe to toe with Doomsday and, and that. And I appreciate Dan Jurgen's trying to bring back the character he created and, and making him important, but that, that time was passed by then. You know, like, yeah, look, Booster really is a good. You know, it was. It was like when just what is wrong with my brain?
Naomi creator Bendis, when Bendis put Naomi in everything in D.C.
because he got the TV show and yeah, he puts Naomi in the Justice League and you're
[01:05:06] Speaker A: like,
[01:05:09] Speaker B: maybe Teen Titans. Right?
[01:05:10] Speaker A: Or maybe.
[01:05:11] Speaker B: Yeah, but that didn't seem to work. And of course the character will probably never be seen again.
You know, it was like Jurgens, oh, I created this guy and I want to make him important again. So I'm going to throw him front and center. At least he'd still been in the book. Right. And he's like reconceptualizing him. But yeah, I just felt that approach with Booster was never the right approach.
But keeping core to. Because that didn't keep core to his initial.
Jurgen's initial concept either. It's like, I think keeping him core to this concept of being somebody from the future that wants to come back and be a superhero and can never just figure it out and never does figure it out. And when he does finally figure it out, he's not allowed to talk about it.
[01:05:54] Speaker A: Right.
[01:05:56] Speaker B: And I Love the episode of the cartoon that does that, the Justice League Unlimited cartoon.
And I love the concept for his own comic series as he does that. And I think it's a really good concept.
Now we're getting. Trying to make it more serious again because they're going to do a movie, but I'm really hoping.
I am hoping that gun pulls from what he read as a kid and pulls from this Booster Gold and stays true to that.
And for God's sake, I hope we get the right Maxwell Lord.
[01:06:37] Speaker A: I mean, I, I didn't mind the last one, but. Yeah, I know what you mean.
You want.
[01:06:41] Speaker B: You.
[01:06:41] Speaker A: You want somebody that's working in the shadow as well, putting on the. The good face and not giving.
[01:06:50] Speaker B: Maxwell Lord is every villain now. Maxwell Lord was a fortune teller villain in comics. Maxwell Lord is Jeff Bezos. Maxwell Lord is Elon Musk. Maxwell Lord is all of these guys that. Yeah, that's the character.
[01:07:04] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:07:05] Speaker B: Giffen and Damattis were prophetic in the way they wrote that character. Yeah, that's exactly what I want. That's exactly what I want. I don't want them to pull any punches there. And I don't want him to have a little girl. That's his foil that keeps him from being like, it's.
[01:07:21] Speaker A: No, yeah.
[01:07:22] Speaker B: No, no, no, no. We. We want him to be.
So Elon Musk probably isn't the right analog because, you know, Elon Musk has 1700 kids out there, but.
[01:07:35] Speaker A: But he doesn't necessarily care about them all, so.
[01:07:38] Speaker B: That is true. I don't think he cares about anything but the money.
Yeah. And like stealing all of the government's data.
[01:07:47] Speaker A: But like, Maxwell Lord.
[01:07:51] Speaker B: Maxwell Lord would. Okay, so maybe Elon Musk is the right guy.
Yeah.
At least Bezos tries to keep a newspaper open and go to space. And I guess they both want to go to space.
[01:08:03] Speaker A: They both want to. Who's going to. Who's going to do it better and faster get to where they want to go and hopefully maybe one of them will stay there.
[01:08:14] Speaker B: Who knows? Who knows? Well, on that note, I think it's a good time to wrap this one up. We've had a bit of banter, but we do want to remind you of a couple of things. One we haven't talked about in a few weeks, but Greg has a book all about space.
[01:08:29] Speaker A: I do. Absolute zero Scamp Launchpad. You can go get it at your local comic book shop. You can get it at Barnes and Noble. You can get it on. On the Internet if you want to. So it's, it's in multiple places. It's out there. You can read it as a real book or digitally.
Yeah, I just met up with Mr. Tanner, Michael Tanner, my co writer for that book over the weekend and had a great chat with him. So.
[01:08:57] Speaker B: Yeah, again, I'm sure he was not a grumpy bear, actually.
[01:09:01] Speaker A: He was in a fantastic mood, Dan. I know.
[01:09:04] Speaker B: Out of character.
[01:09:05] Speaker A: I don't know. He was, he was, he was just. He was delightful as. I mean, if he's not a big.
[01:09:13] Speaker B: If he's not a big grumpy bear, then, then that, that's what makes him delightful, though. That's kind of. Yeah, I know.
[01:09:18] Speaker A: That is. That is. I mean, as long as I've known
[01:09:20] Speaker B: Michael Tanner, that's his character.
[01:09:22] Speaker A: It is. I mean, we were younger, he was a little more bright eyes and, and everything like that. But then, you know, life, it just gets you.
[01:09:31] Speaker B: Well, he can be a big grumpy bear that's still cheerful and plays tricks and teases people. That's true. Yeah. That cannot. Those things are not mutually exclusive.
[01:09:41] Speaker A: I. We found out. And this is, this is, this is something for, for Seattle locals or, you know, Washington locals. But Pancake Chef, our beloved meetup spot, had closed, and then it was reopened again.
But it was reopened again. So we went and ate at Pancake Chef for the longest time. One of the things I could not enjoy at Pancake Chef was pancakes because obviously I have a gluten intolerance. I can't eat them, obviously.
[01:10:14] Speaker B: Right.
[01:10:14] Speaker A: So that's a, that's a big. No. No. So usually I'm. I go there and I get like an omelet or, or a hash brown.
[01:10:21] Speaker B: Bacon and eggs or bacon and eggs. And eggs. Yummy. Great.
[01:10:25] Speaker A: On their menu, Pancakes on their menu. They have gluten free batter now, which they didn't have before. The new people that, that run it, they, they, they, they knew that I was coming, so they made me a cake.
Yeah, no, I had a. I actually had a delicious waffle with all the meats and in it, on it, on the side and eggs.
It was fantastic.
[01:10:54] Speaker B: Well, I had somebody I told about the retro emporium on Meeker street in Kent, Washington today.
[01:11:03] Speaker A: Oh, yeah?
[01:11:04] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, this person happens to be a former fighter that fought on the UFC contender series.
[01:11:11] Speaker A: Oh, wow.
[01:11:13] Speaker B: He runs the MMA program at Fitness Quest in Auburn.
[01:11:17] Speaker A: Huh?
[01:11:18] Speaker B: Or. No, he doesn't run it. Sorry. He rephrased that to me. He helps with. He helps the fighters that are getting fights. Okay. Do you die? So he's he told me he's retiring or he retired after his last fight.
[01:11:29] Speaker A: I see.
[01:11:30] Speaker B: Which was like a week, week and a half ago. But I told him about the Retro Emporium. So you may have a light heavyweight slash heavyweight MMA fighter showing up at the Retro Emporium in Kent, Washington to relive his childhood.
[01:11:45] Speaker A: That'll be awesome.
[01:11:46] Speaker B: You too could relive your childhood at the Retro Emporium on Meeker street in Kent, Washington between third and fourth.
[01:11:52] Speaker A: That's that right there in the heart of historic downtown Kent.
[01:11:57] Speaker B: Yeah. And far away from the glitz and glamour of fake Kent.
[01:12:04] Speaker A: Yes.
[01:12:05] Speaker B: Like four blocks.
[01:12:06] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
It's, it's such a weird, weird downtown.
[01:12:15] Speaker B: It's revitalized
[01:12:18] Speaker A: in this two block radius that it's. Yeah, I don't know. I, I have nothing bad to say about it, but I have nothing.
[01:12:28] Speaker B: Anyway, let's not worry about that. Just go, just go to the Retro Emporium. Yeah.
And of course, as always, if you are having a legal issue, in fact, this fighter who I didn't ask if I could say their name on the podcast, so I'm not going to say their name.
But I mentioned to this fighter, we were talking about one Late Night Legal by Jiu Jitsu Lawyer Paul. That's Jiu Jitsu Lawyer Paul's company. Yeah. Night Legal, PLLC or Late Night Legal. If you want to email, you could always email him at Late K Night like nights, nights in shining.
Latekanitelegalmail.com you could email Paul if you're having a legal issue. You can also call him too at 253-656-4475.
[01:13:18] Speaker A: As I've done before, as, as, as
[01:13:21] Speaker B: Greg has done before and talked to Paul as well. But yes, if you are having any sort of legal issue and you have been denied wages from your employer like the Squacho man has, what you. Of course he donates his time.
Oh yeah, that's, that's, that's. That's legal in the state of Washington is donating your time for work.
[01:13:43] Speaker A: I.
He. He gets, he. He's. He's compensated. He's compensated quite well, Dan.
[01:13:50] Speaker B: Now what do you pay him in baseball cards?
[01:13:53] Speaker A: Oh, that's how they trick you, squad. I know it's true. That's how they trick me.
He gets, he gets compensated in slim gyms and, and all the delicious snacks that he wants.
[01:14:10] Speaker B: Okay, well on that note, snack time aside, yes, I, I doubt this because I don't think that Sasquatches eat Slim Jims.
[01:14:22] Speaker A: I, you know, it's. It's interesting. You.
[01:14:25] Speaker B: This is where your story starts to break down.
[01:14:27] Speaker A: I mean, if.
If the.
[01:14:31] Speaker B: You might advertise them.
[01:14:32] Speaker A: I was gonna say if the competing. If the competing beef snack also has a Sasquatch out there and it eats beef jerky, I think the Squacho man could eat a Slim Jim and it'd be fine.
[01:14:54] Speaker B: I see. Yeah.
[01:14:56] Speaker A: Everybody thinks they just eat nuts and berries and other things like that.
I'm sorry, Dan, that I. I can't believe that Sasquatches don't eat meat.
[01:15:08] Speaker B: Yeah, I. I don't like your analysis because that means he's probably out there pulling humans apart in the woods and eating them.
[01:15:14] Speaker A: Saul Perez from Nerds the Crypt would strongly agree with my.
My assessment of Sasquatches as he saw a Bigfoot when he was a child eating chickens and trying to steal his dog.
That's what he tells me. And I believe. Saul. Saul. I believe that he had seen a Sasquatch Bigfoot monster eating the chickens at the neighbor's house and trying to steal his dog.
[01:15:45] Speaker B: Okay. Well, let's do this. All right.
Well, on that note, that's the end of this episode on I don't believe.
I don't believe you. I don't believe that squash a man eats meat. But with that aside, I don't have time to debate you. So we are going to end this episode of Funny Book Forensics next week. We will wrap up Booster Gold.
This pretty cover. Yes, almost a shame.
[01:16:16] Speaker A: It's a beautiful cover and the interiors are.
[01:16:21] Speaker B: Well, There we go.
Well, yeah, that does make sense. But we will wrap up Booster Gold and we will be off to do something else. Not sure what yet.
[01:16:35] Speaker A: Something fantastic.
[01:16:37] Speaker B: But I. I am going to end. If you listen to the end. And I said we were ending. If you listen to the end. I. I am going to give you one thing.
If you can tell us the day this podcast is recorded, I'm going to give you a hint.
It is the fourth inning and the Mariners are up six to two and Dominic Canzone hit a grand slam.
If you can tell us the date of today's podcast, the first person to reach out to me through messenger on Facebook or I guess I might get your message on X.
Or you could email us@danoneybook forensics.com if you let me know the date this podcast was recorded, it's going to come out in the future, so I'm not going to tell you how far in the future.
If you can tell us the date this podcast was recorded, I will give you one ticket to attend Grid City Comic Con next November.
[01:17:39] Speaker A: Oh, my.
[01:17:40] Speaker B: That's actually.
[01:17:40] Speaker A: That's a. That's awesome.
[01:17:43] Speaker B: Yes. Yeah. So I will. I will give you a ticket to Grid City Comic Con if next November if you contact me and tell me the date of this podcast that we recorded it based on that clue.
All right, that's it. Bye, everyone.
