Blue Beetle: The More Things Change.
Jun. 3rd, 2017 01:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethThis one says DC UNIVERSE REBIRTH across the top, and also Volume One, which apparently means it just sort of stops when things are getting ominous.
But the magic words on the cover were Ted Kord.
I have two longboxes dedicated to a particular era of the Justice League, and Blue and Gold were on the cover of a lot of them. Got their solo comics runs. Got a lot of crossovers.
Stopped reading comics around the era I came to feel was the systematic destruction of all I held dear.
So, Ted Kord, alive and well? Was worth a read.
But this is Jaime's story. His more or less origin story, where Doctor Fate turns up to say the scarab is only disguised as technology and is secretly magic. It's all very ominous.
And Beetle the second and first are parts of his supporting cast.
Which is an interesting call.
And... thus far not quite what I would have hoped.
The thing is, I am not a high schooler. And I'm never going to be again. So I was hoping that there'd be a multi strand story where one of the characters would be for me.
But no, he's Mysterious Mentor, annoying dude who doesn't share information. This is not promising if he's the angle you want to read the story from. But we do get flashbacks from his point of view, so that's more access than many other adults.
I also can't get a handle on how old he's meant to be or how much background as a superhero he's meant to have. There's one point in a 2015 flashback where someone phones him because he's a super and he could contact others, but he's out because heart condition and he actually couldn't because they're not a social club. And, like, okay, new universe right there, because the guy I knew knew everybody and could call up Oracle. So clearly I need to know more about the rest of this version of the DCU to see how it works now.
But we're being told how it works for Beetles. And Ted's origin is different, far as I can tell. There's a flashback with pictures of Batman and Superman in the paper. When he's trying to think of a superhero name for himself he cites Booster Gold as already being a name, and he sees Dan bringing the scarab home some time after he's already made himself some superhero gear. And it's just a thing he sees, not a superhero generation before him. And I think we see Garrett die getting run off the road into a river by Doctor Fate? And then Jaime gets the scarab out of the river later, and then superpowers.
So, coherent story. Makes Ted Kord a wannabe superhero bugging Jaime apparently because he wants to live vicariously through a generation that still physically can, but actually because he failed to help Garrett and this is his follow up.
And for background Ted is science and Garrett is magic, or at least artefacts, and Jaime is going to have to find his place. Or so my feel for how stories work suggests.
So we know quite a bit about Blue Beetle.
But we're mostly following Jaime Reyes around, through a bunch of fights and some investigation, to his senior year in high school, getting detention for not turning up due to superheroics. There's a lot of stuff with the Posse, metahumans Jaime thinks are a gang and maybe bad guys and Ted talks to and thinks could go either way. Justice League and Injustice League are mentioned, for example good guys and bad guys. I start wondering again if Ted was in the League at all in this continuity. It's distracting. But it does mention him working with superheroines in his Beetle days, so there's some preservation of story.
... googling only found other people wondering the same things, only from later issues, that I now want to read.
I won't say I'm hooked, but this is an angle that could work, and what with everyone being more alive than when I quit reading there's all sorts of possibility in it.
But comics are so sloooooow. I don't know if volume two even exists yet, and if it did it would be more likely to put characters further up a tree than to resolve bits yet.
Also, still won't be primarily about Ted.
And never has been about his obvious partnership.
*sigh*
I may read the next bit but may also be tempermentally unsuited to reading an art form that's pretty much the world's longest and most complex WIP.
But the magic words on the cover were Ted Kord.
I have two longboxes dedicated to a particular era of the Justice League, and Blue and Gold were on the cover of a lot of them. Got their solo comics runs. Got a lot of crossovers.
Stopped reading comics around the era I came to feel was the systematic destruction of all I held dear.
So, Ted Kord, alive and well? Was worth a read.
But this is Jaime's story. His more or less origin story, where Doctor Fate turns up to say the scarab is only disguised as technology and is secretly magic. It's all very ominous.
And Beetle the second and first are parts of his supporting cast.
Which is an interesting call.
And... thus far not quite what I would have hoped.
The thing is, I am not a high schooler. And I'm never going to be again. So I was hoping that there'd be a multi strand story where one of the characters would be for me.
But no, he's Mysterious Mentor, annoying dude who doesn't share information. This is not promising if he's the angle you want to read the story from. But we do get flashbacks from his point of view, so that's more access than many other adults.
I also can't get a handle on how old he's meant to be or how much background as a superhero he's meant to have. There's one point in a 2015 flashback where someone phones him because he's a super and he could contact others, but he's out because heart condition and he actually couldn't because they're not a social club. And, like, okay, new universe right there, because the guy I knew knew everybody and could call up Oracle. So clearly I need to know more about the rest of this version of the DCU to see how it works now.
But we're being told how it works for Beetles. And Ted's origin is different, far as I can tell. There's a flashback with pictures of Batman and Superman in the paper. When he's trying to think of a superhero name for himself he cites Booster Gold as already being a name, and he sees Dan bringing the scarab home some time after he's already made himself some superhero gear. And it's just a thing he sees, not a superhero generation before him. And I think we see Garrett die getting run off the road into a river by Doctor Fate? And then Jaime gets the scarab out of the river later, and then superpowers.
So, coherent story. Makes Ted Kord a wannabe superhero bugging Jaime apparently because he wants to live vicariously through a generation that still physically can, but actually because he failed to help Garrett and this is his follow up.
And for background Ted is science and Garrett is magic, or at least artefacts, and Jaime is going to have to find his place. Or so my feel for how stories work suggests.
So we know quite a bit about Blue Beetle.
But we're mostly following Jaime Reyes around, through a bunch of fights and some investigation, to his senior year in high school, getting detention for not turning up due to superheroics. There's a lot of stuff with the Posse, metahumans Jaime thinks are a gang and maybe bad guys and Ted talks to and thinks could go either way. Justice League and Injustice League are mentioned, for example good guys and bad guys. I start wondering again if Ted was in the League at all in this continuity. It's distracting. But it does mention him working with superheroines in his Beetle days, so there's some preservation of story.
... googling only found other people wondering the same things, only from later issues, that I now want to read.
I won't say I'm hooked, but this is an angle that could work, and what with everyone being more alive than when I quit reading there's all sorts of possibility in it.
But comics are so sloooooow. I don't know if volume two even exists yet, and if it did it would be more likely to put characters further up a tree than to resolve bits yet.
Also, still won't be primarily about Ted.
And never has been about his obvious partnership.
*sigh*
I may read the next bit but may also be tempermentally unsuited to reading an art form that's pretty much the world's longest and most complex WIP.