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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