Adam Graham's Blog: Christians and Superheroes - Posts Tagged "blue-beetle"

The Action Heroes Archives, Vol. 2 by Steve Ditko

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This second volume of Steve Ditko's work at Charlton comics collects a ton of work involving characters Captain Atom, the Blue Beetle, and the Question. This is a massive nearly 400 page book, the largest of the DC Archive books which usually clock in at around 250 pages.

Captain Atom had been in previous volumes and he's streamlined somewhat here. For pure comic enjoyment, the Captain Atom stories are the money books. Captain Atom's powers and costumes change as a result of a radiation accident. He also garners some public suspicion as a menace giving him perhaps a bit of a Marvel feel. The character's two part adventure. "Finally Falls the Mighty" and "After the Fall A New Beginning" are great as are his adventures in battling the ghost. It appears on page 249, this will never be resolved as there are no more issues of Captain Atom, but the Charlton Bullseye stories towards the back of the book.

The Blue Beetle is Ted Kord who replaced Dan Garrett and I like the sense of mystery about what happened to Garrett, the original Blue Beetle. IT gave the character interesting problem. It would be like if with no explanation given to readers or the public, someone else became Batman and Bruce Wayne was missing.

The Question is Danny Gage, a local reporter who has a mask which allows him to see and breathe normally but completely hides his feature. The gas allows changes the color of his clothes for some reason. The Question's an interesting character but these early stories are a tad repetitive.

Ditko does the art but doesn't script most of the book. He does get into some class objectivist polemics when he does some of the later stories. This becomes problematic in Blue Beetle #4 and #5 in particular. In Blue Beetle #4, you have the closest thing you get to a team up as the Blue Beetle battles someone who wants to destroy works of art that suggest that there are heroic men or someone are better or achieve more than others. The story had something very important to say about the lowering of standards and the idea of self-esteem run amuck. And that way, it was almost prophetic. But the script was horrible for a comic as page after page was filled with overflowing text bubbles. Issue 5 focused on people objecting to scientists doing crazy things and was a defense of science and it had the same problem. Ditko could escape verbosity in scripts. While the stories are "wrong," it's wrong in a way that's interesting and worth reading to just wonder why Ditko thought this was a good way to communicate his message.

In this end, this is still a fun book and worth reading for the rarity alone. While there aren't classic villain and the only truly great story is the two part Captain Atom story that began the book, it's a fun look at some comics which provided the reading public an interesting alternative during the Silver Age of comics.



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Blue Beetle, Volume 1: Shellshocked by Keith Giffen

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Shellshocked features the first issues with Jaime Reyes as the new Blue Beetle. There's a lot to like about the character. Jaime is a good kid and the background and setting of having a superhero in El Paso is actually a pretty good idea in a universe where heroes are East and West coast sorts of guys. Also, there's a tremendous amount mystery wrapped up around Jaime.

On the other hand, this book is Exhibit A on why the whole One Year later approach where heroes disappeared for a year and the books began after there return was such a bad idea. In this book, it's darn confusing and despite it being early in the character's run, you feel like you need to go out and buy Infinite Crisis to figure out what's going on. And for a book that contains only six issues-there was a lot going on in here. It really struggled with tone. What type of book was this going to be? Dark and mythic? Or light teen superhero? More teen angst?

In the end, both the book and character show promise but whether it will be worth continuing is an iffy question.



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Blue Beetle, Vol. 2: Road Trip by Keith Giffen

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This book collects Issues 7-12 of the first Blue Beetle series with Jaime Reyes. This volume is all about Jaime coming to terms with his powers and understanding where they come from. He'll trackdown the granddaughter of the original Blue Beetle, Dan Garrett, have a strange space adventure involving magic.

This book is interesting. There's so much to like about Jaime. He stands in contrasts to all of the angsty characters out there. His family is even more different. He's told his family about his secret identity and they're okay with it (within reasonable parameters) and even his erstwhile sort of mentor Peacemaker better not run afoul of them and should show his parents respect. Awesome. I also enjoy Peacemaker as a character.

There's some great art, a fun story, and a good mystery that builds, through the book. Other than some issues with strong language by a few secondary characters, this book is almost kid-friendly, which is rare.

Overall, this is an enjoyable and interesting tale with a character that showed definite promise.



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Blue Beetle, Vol. 1: The More Things Change by Keith Giffen

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


I received this book in digital form off of Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.

In this book, Jaime Reyes has the Blue Beetle scarab and is working with Ted Kord, the post-Crisis Blue Beetle, who is now sidelined. Kord provides Jaime support in the field while also helping him study the scarab with hopes of getting rid of it. Their dynamic reminds me a bit of the 1990s series Batman Beyond with Kord being a somewhat more easygoing but also less helpful than Bruce Wayne was in that series.

This book seems to be trying to recapture the spirit of Reyes' original series from the mid-2000s with Jaime being an El Paso-based teenager whose family knows about his superpowers. I liked the series but this just doesn't give the same vibe.

In six issues in this book, there's not really a compelling storyline and it doesn't have the same sense of fun as the earlier series. The dialogue is often repetitive which gets old fast.

The biggest problem in the book may be Jaime. He's not particularly likable as written. There's one story where he spends several pages being a jerk to a metahuman girl who's just trying to be playful and friendly. Jaime is whiny, a fact that is called out by other characters in multiple issues. It only makes the whining slightly less bothersome.

The book has some good supporting characters who sadly don't get enough focus and there are a few moments that call to mind the good old days, but overall, I left the book uninterested in what happens next. I have to say this is one of the more disappointing DC Rebirth titles I've read.



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Blue Beetle, Vol. 3: Reach for the Stars by John Rogers

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Reach for the Stars collects Issues 13-19 of the mid-2000s Blue Bettle series. The stories mostly fall within the bounds of the creators of the Scarab (the Reach) and their efforts to subvert the Earth, yet the stories also work as self-contained tales.

Jaime Reyes meets up with Guy Gardener, Superman, and the Teen Titans while battling Lobo, Eclipso, and Giganta. The stories flow nicely and the supporting cast gives the book plenty of heart. One of my favorites when Jaime has to travel to Mexico to fight a giant and save the inhabits of the town and he needs to get the owner of a luxury hotel to let the poor people to stay so he can fight the villain and there's a nice plot twist as to that is. Overall, this is another fun series of adventures in the Blue Beetle series.



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Blue Beetle, Vol. 4: End Game by John Rogers

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This book collects Issues 20-26 of Jaime Reyes' original Blue Beetle series.

Issue 20 is a tie-in into the Sinestro Corps War. It's a decent enough story that shows the strength of Jaime's character and also brings about a big change for Peacemaker.

Issue 21 finds the Spectre haunting a prison punishing the guilty and forces Jaime to confront his own feelings on mercy and revenge. Good character work.

This leads into the big honking event in Issues 22-25 where Jaime takes on the Reach's planned slow invasion of Earth. This is a well-paced story. Events in the comic were really building towards with a nice slow burn. While in the second season of the TV show, "Young Justice," the Reach is taken down by a team of heroes, Jaime does it alone and unlike in other stories in a shared Marvel or DC Universe where the hero takes on a world-threatening villain without calling in other heroes, this story actually addressed why that's not done. Kudos. It's got great action and some solid character moments. Characters who readers who have been loved by fans of the book since its inception all get involved. It's a really fun story.

Issue 26 is told almost entirely in Spanish. It's not a bad story, but it is a bit gimmicky.

Still, it's fun like all the other stories in this volume. This was a really solid volume for the Blue Beetle.



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