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Got an email a few weeks back with a suggestion for a subject for my column and decided to run with it. In the last month, DC Comics pulled off what may be the lamest "event" I've ever heard of, with the death of Blue Beetle in "Countdown to Infinite Crisis" #1. I have to admit I haven't read the book, so I won't comment on the story. The Powers The Be at DC seem to have telegraphed this event, with their announcements that the Blue Beetle would figure prominently in the events of "Countdown", from that point on, I heard no other name mentioned in the speculation over whose body Batman is holding on the cover of "Countdown" #1.
So, Ted Kord, the most recent Blue Beetle is dead. Ho-hum.
Sure, I'll miss the banter between Booster Gold and Blue Beetle when they appeared together, but it's a small loss, in the long run. Plus....we all know there will be another Blue Beetle, sometime in the future.
To get any idea what direction a new Blue Beetle might take, we need to look back at the Blue Beetles of the past. Blue Beetle began his career with Fox Features Syndicate, when he appeared in Mystery Men #1 in August, 1939. Eventually, like Superman, Beetle would star in his own newspaper strip and radio show, but he never quite made it to the level of the Saturday morning movie serial, which was considered the prize, in those days.
When his father was murdered by gangsters, Dan Garrett joing the NYPD. The slow pace of police work made him yearn for some way to cut through the red tape and deliver justice with his own hands. He was soon aided in this cause by his friend and mentor, Dr. Franz, a pharmacist and drug store proprietor who had developed a compound he called "Vitamin 2X." Together with a bullet-proof costume of some chainmail-like material, he began fighting crime as the Blue Beetle.
The original Blue Beetle costume is clearly inspired by the costume of the Ghost Who Walks, himself, The Phantom and the name is derivative of the Green Hornet, with alliteration thrown in to make it just that much cheesier. Beetle's outfit was an unrelieved blue, with only the yellow gloves and belt to break up the monotony.
It's interesting, that, while I knew the Blue Beetle had roots in the Golden Age, I did not know about the original version of the character, or his powers. The earliest Blue Beetle I recognized seems to be the Silver Age version published by Charlton comics. In this version, Dan Garrett is an archaeologist who discovers a mystical blue scarab with "the power to banish evil from the Earth for all time."
This Blue Beetle, with no explanation, or acknowledgement of the previous version, appeared in 54 issues of his own comic at Charlton and made appearances in Captain Atom's title, as well. In an interesting twist, the last story of this Blue Beetle is the origin story of the next, Ted Kord.
The Silver Age Blue Beetle was almost identical to the Golden Age version, in appearance, but his hood has a kind of "crest" on top and his gloves are red, rather than yellow (though I've seen some cover images of the Golden Age BB that show red gloves, so this may not be a departure). His suit was often drawn to resemble chainmail, but sometimes not.
Ted Kord was an electronics genius and inventor. He attended Midwestern University, where for one semester, he was a student of Prof. Dan Garrett, a guest instructor. Later, when Ted learned that his uncle, Jarvis Kord, was planning to use his own inventions to take over the world, Ted contact his old professor for help. Dan and Ted traveled to Pago Island, where Jarvis Kord had his laboratory and was manufacturing an army of robot soldiers and Garrett, as the Blue Beetle, fought Jarvis's machines and won, at the cost of his own life.
His mentor buried under tons of rock and debris, Ted Kord vowed to take up the mantle of the Blue Beetle and carry on Dan's crusade against evil. The mystical scarab was lost in the cave-in, so Ted was forced to use his own technical genius to outfit himself for his personal war on crime. As the Blue Beetle, Ted Kord wore a skintight suit of bullet resistant metallic weave and carried the lamest weapon in the history of comicbook heroes, the BB Gun. No, it's not a Daisy, it doesn't shoot any actual BBs. It shoots.....sit down, or you'll fall down.....air. Yes, compressed air. From a rather tiny reservoir of compressed air, through a 4 or 5 inch wide orifice, it shoots AIR!!! Yes, Ted Kord fought crime and injustice with the aid of a hair dryer. Oh, and it lets off a big flash of light. Woo. I know. I'm shaking in my boots, already.
The Blue Beetle had to get around, so Ted built a large beetle-shaped VTOL aircraft. The legs of the "Bug" could be worked like Waldoes, which make them handy for something besides landing gear and adding lots of drag. I liked one of the later versions of the Bug, which appeared in DC's Blue Beetle comic, based on the Nite Owl's Owlship from "Watchmen", who was, himself, a version of the Blue Beetle. It was bulbous, but still sleeker than the old Bug.
And, last but not least, there's a future BB, which I'm not going to draw for you, go look him up in Kingdom Come. Very nice design, a little too heavy on the medieval armor motif, for my tastes, but still cool.
For my version, I also went with armor, but took my inspiration from a different source. I first had the idea for a powered-armor version of Blue Beetle, about ten years ago. One of the mental exercises my friends and I go through, from time to time, is creating a comic set in the Marvel or DC universes and pitching it to each other. I had this idea, way before Kingdom Come or any of that, for a Justice League: The Next Generation, for want of a better title. In it, I had descendants of the current Justice League (at the time) filling the roles of the current heroes. There was the Tim Drake Batman, Superboy had grown up to be Superman, etc . . .
And there was a new Blue Beetle. For my version, this Beetle had discovered a way to tap into the mystic power source of the second Blue Beetle and used it to power a suit of techno-organic chitinous armor. The biggest influence on my design was the Guyver suits I had seen in anime and books. I liked the weird "buggy" feel of the Guyver suits.
Since I will always look for a way to make a character fly, I added the "wing covers" on the back carapace. The way they work is just like a real beetle's wing covers, they rotate out and to the sides, but in this case, they contain jet exhausts for a vectored thrust "jet-pack". The armor is an organic, self-healing material derived from the chitinous body coverings of some of Darkseid's Parademons, making it proof against most Earthly weapons. The mystical power source gives him some protection against magical attacks.
I haven't thought about WHO is inside the suit, but I think it would be good to make it someone we don't know, like Ted Kord was, when he took up the mantle.
Hope everyone's seen the "Serenity" trailer, by now. It's looking good! They already sold out the "sneak" preview on May 5, in the ten cities where it's showing and that's a very good sign. I think "Serenity" is going to be the best SF movie, this year!
No power in the 'verse can stop it!!!!
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