4 issue test #35 - Blue Beetle

 

If there’s one thing I learned from watching Young Justice: Invasion again is that Jaime Reyes is a fascinating character. Well, that coupled with Linkara’s retrospective on the character last year.

He hasn’t had a great history in comics, both his series were cancelled due to low sales but they’re trying again, but they have a new gimmick. Ted Kord, the previous incarnation of the Blue Beetle made his reappearance in the New52, his father was killed by Lex Luthor in the opening issue. Well, technically he was blackmailed and the crime syndicate killed him whilst Luthor ignored him but semantics. Anyway, Ted Kord was a Blue Beetle in previous continuity but it appeared that they’d retconned it, especially given how young he was in that.

Speaking of continuity, far as I can tell, this book brushes the previous Blue Beetle continuity under the rug and sets it on fire for good measure. Given what I’ve heard about it, I’m not sad about that. We have a fresh start; can they make good on it? Let’s take a look.

I'll be honest, this cover almost put me off the book, it looks scary as sh*t

The story opens with Blue Beetle being attacked by erm… apparently, their names are Rack and Ruin, kay. And we get a little summary of the premise, I’ll explain that later for ease of summary.

We flash back to earlier I guess and we get an introduction to our cast. Milagro, Jaime’s young sister. Tina, Milagro’s friend who sort of likes Jaime. Jaime’s parents, Jaime himself, sporting a goatee no less and Jamie’s friends, Paco and Brenda who today are arguing about Paco saying “God bless you” when Brenda sneezed. Don’t know if this is an American thing but usually just “bless you” works. Meh, either way, Brenda’s the b*tch in this argument

Jaime’s phone rings and it’s Ted, he’s managed to tune his goggles to police frequency and has heard about 2 people calling out the Blue Beetle at a Sundollar coffee shop. Ted’s heading out in his spaceship. Yes, he has one of those, I love comics. Brenda agrees to dump Jamie’s stuff in his locker as he armours up to help. She and Paco continue their ‘banter’ although, Paco gets the b*tch award this time.

Cut to the very trashed sundollar coffee where banter is happening. Ted and Jamie arrive, with Ted advising Jamie to walk in and find out what’s going on. In his defence, he’s pretty to this as well. He gets a thing thrown at him. Might be a coffee machine but we only see it from the back so I don’t know. One of them (when their characters actually become interesting I’ll try and learn the difference but until then, no chance) but Jamie’s scarab blasts him back without Jamie’s input.

Ted sees that they’re “reading” him but doesn’t explain further. That’ll be a common thing with him. The other grabs him by the neck and suddenly Blue’s plasma cannon fires on the roof. Blue is thrust into a wall and the building begins to collapse but thankfully Blue manages to protect the civilians from the debris.

With Ted still not contributing anything useful, Jaime smashes the two together, shattering them. They were robots. Unfortunately, that’s not the end as the parts begin to attack him before reforming. Ted eventually decides to help by firing blue non-toxic gas into the room. Seeing that they have a secondary opponent, Rack and Ruin retreat.

We get what’s essentially a repeat of the scene from DC Rebirth #1 where Jaime says he’s not interested in playing Batman and Robin and only came to Kord to get the scarab removed. He leaves, late for school, as Ted gets a visit from Doctor Fate, who warns the scarab is in fact not alien technology but magic.

Brenda returns home to her Aunt Amparo. She’s on the phone to an unknown about what happened. Her eyes turn red as she finishes her conversation.

#1 opens with Jaime talking to Brenda about a dream he’s had. Doctor Fate fighting the Blue Beetle, but he wasn’t the Beetle, he was an outside viewer. More banter, school career day and guess who’s the first speaker, Ted Kord of course. Ted’s speech is about how daydreaming leads to the greatest of innovations or something, which sparks a muted response from the crowd.

After some more banter, we see that Ted is speaking to some members of the Posse, a metahuman street gang who Jamie and co don’t trust for reasons probably explained in that pile of ashes that was the new52 Blue Beetle, maybe. They back away but Ted teleports in front of them, Batman style. But not before more banter, of course.

So, after some talk about running tests on Paco and Brenda which doesn’t amount to anything, they head into the Bug (Ted’s spaceship) and he reveals he got some intel from the Posse, who he describes them as neither good nor bad guys, with the potential to become either. There are several people missing and missing metahumans is not a good thing. They fly to the house of one of them and find that it’s been busted from the inside. Blue goes to investigate.

He discovers a great hole but before he can investigate he’s attacked. The attacker believes Blue ‘took them.’ Apparently, the guy can move through darkness, whatever that means, similar to someone Ted knew, apparently. He mentions Doctor Fate stopping by but Jamie is consumed by the attacker. He demands that Jaime bring them back but has little to show. Jaime manages to escape, weakening, he calls himself Blot so… And it turns out to be the missing person whose family owned the house. But before we can go any further, the Posse show up.

#2 has a caption briefly explaining the Posse. Root is sentient foliage (like Groot but without a G) Blur, a teleporter across a limited range, Nightcatcher, a living bioweapon, Sphish who is living energy, Blot, who I’d covered before and Smoky a “misty powerhouse.” Blue and the Posse explore the hole with Root noting there are others like it.

One of them mentions getting Blot over to Doc Reyes, Jaime’s mother, which Jaime responds a little harshly to finding to. Ted warns him not to overreact and compromise his semi-secret identity. Oh, and it looks like he’s talking to himself every time he talks to him. He goes into the tunnels to investigate whilst arguing with Ted about his mum, but finds only dead ends.

The Posse decide to take off and because we need plot for the rest of the issue, Blur has decided to be Blue Beetle’s Catwoman, except Jamie has no interest in her, awkward. I’m skipping through most of this, although it is funny and does have some good action. She eventually gets close enough to kiss him, in armoured form, when she reverts to human form, and Root eventually calls her away. Oh, and during this, Paco and Brenda engage in yet more banter see someone disintegrate in front of them and decide warning Jaime may be the best course.

Jaime returns home and confronts his mother over the Posse thing, the argue but ultimately his mother wins out and they hug.

#3 opens with Jaime armouring up in his sleep, he finds a hole in the road and flies through it and wakes up confronted by hundreds of green armoured things, things that seem to be capable of breaking up his armour. With the scarab’s help, he dispatches them, although not sure about that vehicle thing and he passes out on the road with the hole miraculously healed.

Deciding enough is enough he goes to Ted, who’s working on a building project for something. He agrees to undergo whatever tests are needed to get the thing removed. Ted recalls his meeting with Fate, who called Jaime a vessel and suggested a mercy killing, stating the chaos to come could kill millions. Ted doesn’t believe all and laughs it off with Jamie.

Teri, Ted’s secretary has a meeting with private investigators Sugar and Spike for unknown reasons. Jamie got detention for being absent again as he arrives at midday. He and Paco laugh it off as a girl awkwardly watches the two. After school, Jaime heads to the garage to speak with his dad, who’s working with employee/partner Carlos fixing a car whilst engaging in… you fill in the blank.

Jaime tells his father about what’s going on and he insists full disclosure with both him and Jaime’s mother when the tests are done. Later Jaime goes to Brenda’s house, he’s invited for dinner which he eventually accepts. He tells Brenda about the tests which I just noticed, he didn’t tell Paco, hmm, and she offers to come along if he wanted. At the airport, a child is killed after bumping into someone with a lot of piercings. And possibly an armoured form similar to those we saw in the opening.

#4 opens in 2015, and since this is supposedly the beginning of Jaime’s origin, I think that confirms that we can safely pour those ashes down the river. Anyway, it opens with someone calling Ted, he needs help and thought Ted might have contact with the right people, he doesn’t. He drives off but Doctor Fate appears and his car runs into the river.

In a remarkable display of cruelty by Fate, he leaves the guy to drown, but finds the casket he was looking for was empty.

After a class concludes and presumably Paco now knows about the tests now. A guy named Raoul passes out and is taken to hospital. Brenda pops by and introduces the girl from the last issue, Naomi, she takes Paco, leaving them to talk whilst engaging in yet more banter. Not much is said. After some tests are conducted she asks for his origin and he complies. He was down by the river with Paco and Brenda as they engage in banter which is interrupted by the discovery of a blue glint. Paco picks it up but it eventually ends up on Jaime’s back.

Turns out the tests reveal that the scarab is mutating his skeletal structure. Something Teri is happy to leave to Ted to explain to Jaime. She also expresses some disbelief in the origin and says the scarab can’t be removed without killing him. Ted flashes back to his own stint as a superhero. He’d come up with suit, but whilst functional looked sh*t, partially a lack of motif.

A guy named Dan Garett, an archaeologist arrives at the apartment next door to his and reveals his horde, including a blue scarab, inspiring Ted to become Blue Beetle. It could be Dan in the earlier scene too but it’s hard to tell. The hair colours are different but there’s a few glitches like that in this issue. Paco’s hair changes colour 3 times in the same page. Jaime finds Naomi outside and they finally agree to go on a date.

So, that was Blue Beetle #1-4 and Rebirth, but how do they stack up, let’s take a look.

OK, I don’t have a lot of bad things to say about this comic aside from the sucky Rebirth cover and the occasional art goof, but there’s one thing that was rather distracting. I don’t know whose bright idea it is to fill the panel gaps with spots but please stop, it’s distracting, it’s hypnotic and if you’re not alert it can make the entire comic look blurry.

What I like. Despite piling the cr*p on Jaime very early on, it’s never a depressing read, there’s plenty of humour and it’s mostly down to the banter. I usually detest using the word but there really is no other way of saying it. Whether it’s Paco and Brenada sniping each other or the love/hate conversations between Jamie and Ted, it’s always funny listening to them converse. Part of that is down to how natural it sounds, none of it feels forced or contrived, that’s really not easy to pull off so kudos to Keith Giffen for that.

He worked on the early Blue Beetle run before the New52 and clearly has an understanding with the characters involved. Including Ted Kord who proves entertaining in his supporting role.

These stories, whilst serving as decent stand-alones also begin laying seeds from the green monster invasion, Fate’s warning, the scarab overtaking and mutating Jaime, the Posse and the remaining holes, the private detectives, the disintegrating man and others too. These are well told and don’t feel extraneous if they’re not the central focus.

Plot-wise, I dunno if I like Ted having history a superhero. I know it’s to match his old counterpart but it’s only been a couple of years in-universe since he inherited his father’s company and he was hardly old then. Also, I don't know if the scarab being magic was down to Giffen of Geoff Johns but it was kinda stupid seeing how it was magic before and retconned to be alien

The artwork is usually fine, Scott Kollins, who also was involved in the writing does some good artwork and despite a few glitches in #4, the colours by Romuldo Fajardo Jr are also pretty good.

Rating

Rebirth – 8/10

#1 – 8/10

#2 8/10

#3 8/10

#4 7/10

Overall – 7.8/10

Recommendation: If you can get past the dots in the panel gaps, you’ll find a very entertaining read here. Worth checking out. 

Images/clips used in this review are from Blue Beetle and belong to their respective owners. All images in this review are subject to fair use