Keith Giffen, John Rogers, Cully Hamner, et. al, Blue Beetle (DC Comics 2006-). $2.99, monthly.

By Alex Boney

I didn’t want to like the new Blue Beetle series. Like many adults still reading and studying comics, I grew up reading superhero books. My first exposure to the Justice League was through Keith Giffen’s and J.M. DeMatteis’ Justice League International/America/Europe books from the late 80s and early 90s. Those books were formative in my understanding of the wide spectrum of superhero stories, since that was the same time superhero comics began shifting toward Watchmen and Dark Knight territory (in tone, if not always in substance). Blue Beetle and Booster Gold were the heart of that JLA team. Blue Beetle was Ted Kord, a businessman/inventor who didn’t have any real powers but had a lot of cool gadgets and a sense of humor. He was essentially a brighter, more lighthearted version of Batman. When DC decided to kill Blue Beetle in the lead-up to their latest big event (Infinite Crisis), I was pretty irritated. It seems ridiculous to become attached to characters in the ever-fluctuating world of comics, but I had nonetheless. It has become a bit of a joke in the last few years that all the Giffen/DeMatteis characters are expendable, largely because most of the heroes on their teams were second- and third-tier heroes. But I thought Blue Beetle was somehow above the fray. When I read that DC was launching a new Blue Beetle book in the aftermath of Infinite Crisis, I wasn’t expecting much. But after eleven issues, I find myself grudgingly liking this book more and more.

Part of what makes Blue Beetle work thus far is that it doesn’t ignore what (or who) Blue Beetle was before. In fact, the legacy of the character is very much what drives the story. “Legacy” characters are often difficult to unpack, and Blue Beetle is certainly no exception. The publication history of the character stretches back to 1939, when Fox Publications introduced Blue Beetle as an attempt to cash into the success of the superhero boom. The character was acquired by Charlton Comics in the 1960s and eventually purchased by DC Comics in the mid-1980s. During that time, the man wearing the suit changed significantly. The original Beetle was a cop named Dan Garritt. The character’s origin, powers, and name (now Dan Garrett) were altered at Charlton before Steve Ditko revamped the character completely in 1966. Ted Kord took over the Blue Beetle identity when Dan Garrett died, and Kord remained the non-powered Blue Beetle from the late 60s to 2005. DC’s new Blue Beetle is a young Hispanic kid named Jaime Reyes who accidentally found the same magical scarab that had given Dan Garrett his powers. The cynical part of me wanted to chalk this up as another recent example of DC moving toward social consciousness at the expense of its past. The new Firestorm and Batwoman have garnered a good deal of media attention and skeptical preemptive criticism recently, and it seemed as though Blue Beetle was being added to that list. But as the story has unfolded, it has become clear that this book is largely about coming to terms with a past that’s as uncontrollable as the present.

I recently had the opportunity to talk about the new Blue Beetle with Keith Giffen, who not only used Ted Kord prominently in Justice League, but also created the new Beetle and helped write the first ten issues of the current series. According to Giffen, he didn’t intend Jaime’s ethnicity to be the central focus of the book: “[DC Executive Editor] Dan Didio took me out to lunch and sat me down and during the conversation turned to me and asked, ‘If I just gave you the name Blue Beetle and a scarab, what would you do with it?’ I thought about it for a while and then basically went into my sermon about always wanting to do an Hispanic character and do it in a way that wasn’t about him being Hispanic, any more than Spider-Man is about Peter Parker being Irish-Catholic or whatever he is.” It’s a good concept, but it wouldn’t work if it didn’t feel relevant or real. Part of what grounds the new Blue Beetle is its sense of humor. From Lobo to Ambush Bug, Giffen’s comic work has always mixed superheroes and humor with a touch of parody. There’s no parody in Blue Beetle, but humor is part of what provides the book’s underlying humanity.

Blue Beetle features a setting and a cast of characters that are unique both to the character and to the DC Universe in general. Jaime Reyes is the son of a working-class Hispanic family living in El Paso, TX.  His home situation is fairly normal—a protective, hard-working set of parents and an annoying little sister. Pop culture is prevalent throughout as well, from the pervasive presence of the internet as the kids’ primary research tool to realistic slang. But this isn’t just a safe, lighthearted kid’s book. Giffen and co-writer John Rogers don’t veer away from hard social issues. Jaime and his friends deal with gang influence on the Texas border town, and his closest friend is a victim of habitual domestic abuse. The tone is one of levity, but it wouldn’t work if it were a one-note book.

There’s an element of realism to Blue Beetle, but the book is also rewarding for long-time superhero gutter geeks because it embraces—even revels in—DC Universe history and continuity. References to DC’s past litter the book, including the “El Diablo” restaurant in issue #8, the Phantom Stranger’s curiosity in issue #s 5-6, the involvement of the New Gods in issue #s 10-11, and the presence of Peacemaker (a former fellow Charlton hero) as a mentor throughout. The book is also driven by mysteries that, even after eleven issues, still haven’t been answered. No one seems to know what the scarab is or where its powers come from. But the mysteries are interesting enough to keep me reading, and none of the mysteries seem to refute or contradict the history of the character. “I created a Blue Beetle to carry on the legacy and added something to the mythos in terms of the scarab without violating anything that had gone on before,” Giffen says. “There is a reason Jaime has powers and Dan Garrett had some of the powers and Ted Kord didn’t. The new Blue Beetle doesn’t invalidate anything. What it does is say ‘okay, here’s something you didn’t know.’” In fact, several issues feature Jaime trying to piece together the convoluted history of the Blue Beetle legacy so that he can figure out his (seemingly random) place in that line.

Jaime’s also dealing with the issue of what a hero should be, and this is particularly interesting from a young teenager’s perspective. As Giffen notes, “Heroes are heroes even when it’s hard to be a hero. Last time I checked, super powers don’t come with an instruction booklet. What’s important is that heroes aren’t the Punisher and Lobo. Heroes don’t kill. People sometimes say about Superman, ‘But he’s such a boy scout.’ When did that become such a bad thing?” Stan Lee’s and Steve Ditko’s Spider-Man stories from the 1960s did this well, but they feel incredibly dated now. Jaime provides a new narrative perspective for a new time. Seeing a teenager developing his own personal code of heroism in an age of moral relevance (especially in the post-1990s superhero world) is engaging and even a bit novel. I was predisposed not to like this book because of my attachment to Blue Beetle as a character. But I’ve come around for the same reason.