Blue Beetle
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| Blue Beetle | |
 Dan Garrett, Ted Kord, and Jaime Reyes. Art from the Blue Beetle Companion, by Tom Feister. |
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| Publisher | Fox Comics Charlton Comics Americomics DC Comics |
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| First appearance | Mystery Men Comics #1 (Aug. 1939) |
| Created by | Charles Nicholas Wojtkowski |
| Characters | Dan Garrett Ted Kord Jaime Reyes |
Blue Beetle is the name of three fictional, American comic book superheroes published by a variety of companies since 1940.
Contents |
[edit] Publication history
| Blue Beetle (vol. 1-6) The Blue Beetle (vol. 7) |
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| Publisher | Vol. 1: Fox Comics (except #12-30 Holyoke Publishing) Vol. 2-5: Charlton Comics Vol. 6 & 7: DC Comics |
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| Schedule | Vol. 1: Bimonthly through #13, #41-44 Monthly, #17-36, #45-60 Quarterly, #37-40 Vol. 2, 5-7: Monthly Vol. 3: Monthly through #4 Bimonthly, #5 Vol. 4: Monthly through #53 Bi-monthly, #54 |
| Format | All Standard U.S., 4 color. When published, ongoing. |
| Publication date | Vol. 1: 1939 - August 1950 Vol. 2: February 1955 - August 1955 Vol. 3: June 1964 - March/April 1965 Vol. 4: July 1965 - February/March 1966 Vol. 5: June 1967 - November 1968 Vol. 6: June 1986 - May 1988 Vol. 7: May 2006 - March 2008+ (ongoing) |
| Number of issues | Vol. 1: 59 (numbered 1-42; 44-60) Vol. 2: 4 (numbered 18-21) Vol. 3: 5 Vol. 4: 5 (numbered 50-54) Vol. 5: 5 Vol. 6: 24 Vol. 7: 23+ (ongoing) |
| Main character(s) | Vol. 1-4: Dan Garrett Vol. 5 & 6: Ted Kord Vol. 7: Jaime Reyes |
The original Blue Beetle, Dan Garrett, first appeared in Fox Comics' Mystery Men Comics #1 (Aug. 1939), with art by Charles Nicholas Wojtkowski (as Charles Nicholas) (though the Grand Comics Database tentatively credits Will Eisner as the scripter.[1]) A rookie police officer, he used special equipment, a bulletproof costume (sometimes) and a superstrength-inducing "vitamin", and the assistance of a neighborhood pharmacist to fight crime. He starred in a comic book series, comic strip and radio serial but, like most Golden Age superheroes, he fell into obscurity in the 1950s. The comic book series saw a number of anomalies in publication: 19 issues, #12 through #30, were published through Holyoke Publishing; no issue #43 was published; publication frequency varied through the run; and there were gaps where issues were not published, with large ones occurring in early 1947 and between mid-1948 and early 1950.
In the mid-1950s, Fox Comics went defunct and sold rights to the Blue Beetle to Charlton Comics. That company published a few sporadic adventures of the Golden Age character before revamping the hero in 1966. In Dan Garrett's revised origin, he was an archeologist who found a magical Egyptian artifact, resembling a scarab, which he used to fight crime. Charlton tried three times to use the character to carry a self titled series. Two of the attempts retained the numbering of a previous title. These also were eventually replaced with new titles that carried on the numbering.
The new series was short-lived, and in 1967, Charlton introduced Ted Kord, a student of Dan Garrett's who took on the role when Garrett died. Kord was an inventor hero, using a variety of gadgets. With the rest of the Charlton line-up, he was sold to DC Comics in 1983 and appeared with several superhero groups, including the Justice League.
In 2006, DC introduced a new Blue Beetle, teenager Jaime Reyes whose powers are derived from the scarab, now revealed as a piece of advanced alien technology.
[edit] Dan Garrett
[edit] Fox Feature Syndicate
The original Golden Age Blue Beetle was Dan Garrett[2], son of a police officer killed by a criminal. This Fox Feature Syndicate version of the character debuted in Mystery Men Comics #1 (Aug. 1939), and began appearing in his own 60-issue series shortly thereafter.
Rookie patrolman Dan Garrett donned a bulletproof costume (described by Garrett as being made of a chain-mail which was "as thin and light as silk"), and temporarily gained superhuman strength from ingesting the mysterious vitamin 2-X.[3]
The supporting cast remained fairly stable throughout this original run, and included Joan Mason, a crime reporter for the Daily Blade who would ultimately star in her own backup stories, and Mike Mannigan, Dan's stereotypically Irish partner on the force. Dr. Franz, a local pharmacist and inventor of the bulletproof suit and 2-X formula, played a large role in the first few issues, but eventually faded from the cast.
A popular character of the era, he had his own short-lived comic strip, drawn by a pseudonymous Jack Kirby and others, and a radio serial that ran for 48 thirteen-minute episodes. When superheroes fell out of vogue in the late 1940s, Fox downplayed the Beetle's superheroic aspects (his superhuman abilities were removed) and eventually relegated him to a host for true crime stories before the character went on hiatus.
[edit] Charlton Comics
Charlton Comics obtained the rights to the Blue Beetle, and reprinted some stories in its anthology titles and in a four-issue Blue Beetle reprint series numbered 18-21.
During the genesis of the Silver Age of Comics, Charlton would revise Garrett's character for a new Blue Beetle series. Charlton's new Blue Beetle retained the original's name, but none of his powers or origin. This Beetle was archaeologist Dan Garrett, who obtained a number of superhuman powers (including enhanced strength, flight and the ability to generate lightning) from a mystical scarab he found during a dig in Egypt, where it had been used to imprison an evil mummified Pharaoh. He would transform into the Blue Beetle by saying the words "Kaji Dha!" This version by writer Joe Gill and artist Tony Tallarico was played at least initially for camp, with stories like "The Giant Mummy who was Not Dead".
Dan Garrett briefly returned in Blue Beetle (vol. 6), resurrected by his mystical scarab to battle against his successor. He can be seen in flashback stories.
[edit] DC Comics
The Charlton version of Dan Garrett was spotlighted in the second issue of DC's 1980s Secret Origins series, in which his origin was retold along with that of Ted Kord. Subsequent appearances by Dan Garrett (in flashback stories) include guest spots or cameos in Infinity Inc., Captain Atom, JLA: Year One and Legends of the DC Universe.
[edit] Legacy
Booster Gold vol. 2, #2 (2007) established that the DC Comics incarnation of the Daniel Garrett Blue Beetle made his debut on August 14, 1939. The Jamie Reyes Blue Beetle has met Daniel's granddaughter, Danielle.[issue # needed] He also met Dan himself in Booster Gold vol. 2, #6
[edit] Ted Kord
The replacement Blue Beetle created by Charlton Comics, and later published by DC Comics, is Ted Kord, a former student of Dan Garrett, a genius-level inventor and a gifted athlete. Kord and Garrett were investigating Kord's Uncle Jarvis when they learned Jarvis was working to create an army of androids to take over Earth. Garrett changed into Blue Beetle, but was killed in battle. As he died, he passed on to Kord the responsibility of being Blue Beetle, but was unable to pass on the mystical scarab.
Ted had the scarab for some time, but never used it. He carried it during the Crisis on Infinite Earths when he was chosen by The Monitor to protect the multiple earths, but it only reacted when he was attacked; It did not give him super powers.
As the Blue Beetle, Ted funded his adventures through his company, Kord Industries, and was chronically short on cash. He joined the Justice League and met his best friend, Booster Gold. Each was considered a second stringer, and for many years, the Blue Beetle was a member of one second-rate superhero group or another.
During the Death of Superman saga the Blue Beetle and the other JLA members tried to stop Doomsday's path of destruction. Doomsday displayed his near invunerablility and put the Blue beetle into a coma.
In Countdown to Infinite Crisis, Blue Beetle discovered a renewed Checkmate organization led by Maxwell Lord, former bankroller of the JLA. Kord covertly entered Checkmate headquarters, where he found a database containing information on every metahuman on Earth. However, he was captured before he could return to the JLA with the information, and while in Lord's custody was executed with a single gunshot to the head. Before dying, he had used the scarab in an attempt to contact Captain Marvel, but was forced to leave it with Shazam in the Rock of Eternity when the wizard sent him back to Earth.
In Booster Gold #6, Booster, along with Jaime, Dan, and Black Beetle in the guise of a Blue Beetle from the future, travels back in time and manages to rescue Ted moments before his death.
[edit] Jaime Reyes
Jaime Reyes is a teenager who lives in El Paso, Texas, with his father, mother and little sister; his father owns a garage. Jaime has offered to help his father out at the garage, but his father has turned him down, feeling Jaime should enjoy his childhood for as long as he can (and should attempt to further his education). Jaime has an acute sense of responsibility for his family and friends, though he complains about being the one to sort out any messes.
After the wizard Shazam was killed and the Rock of Eternity destroyed, the scarab landed in a vacant lot in El Paso where Jaime found it, thinking it to be nothing but a huge bug. When Booster Gold came to retrieve the scarab, it had fused to Jaime's spine while the boy had been asleep, making Jaime the new Blue Beetle. After a few minor encounters locally, he was swept up in the climactic battle with Brother Eye during Infinite Crisis. At its conclusion, he is hurled back to Earth where he discovers he has been missing for a year.
[edit] The scarab
The Blue Beetle scarab, previously believed a piece of magic, is in fact a tool of war of the Reach, an ancient race of cosmic marauders. After being defeated by the Guardians of the Universe thousand of years ago, and forced in a truce, the Reach had since posed as benevolent aliens lending their advanced technology to budding civilization, with the Scarab intended as a gift for that world Champion, giving him amazing powers and the knowledge of the Reach to protect their peers. In fact the scarab is part of an advanced hive mind, with its own artificial intelligence covertly supplanting his wearer's own, turning it into the ultimate infiltrator, a covert agent intended to take over his own world, as evidenced when [4] a still damaged scarab revives Garrett to fight Ted Kord, until Garrett is able to reassert its individuality. Damaged when Dan Garrett forcibly extracted it from its charging cradle, located in a faux pyramid in Egypt, the scarab is first activated with chunks of its programming missing, so to give several abilities to Dan Garrett, but none of the Reach knowledge base. As Ted Kord was forced to surrender the scarab during the Crisis on Infinite Earths, the combined additional damage given by the multiversal/cronal energies fed into it during Booster Gold's mission to protect the Multiverse, and the magic forces of the Shadow Demons put into a dormant state from year, until it wakes, enacting its full programming to turn Jaime Reyes into the infiltrator [5]. However, the strongwill and the good nature of Jaime Reyes, combined with the still corrupted programming of the scarab, helped it's A.I. to assert itself as an individual, a tool no more. Claiming Khaji Da (the combined utterance of khaji, the codeword for infiltrator, and da, its own serial number) as its own name at the end of such process, the scarab over time created a strong bond with Jaime, helping him as a true friend, and even trying to spread the concept of individuality between its fellow scarabs [6].
[edit] Alternate versions
[edit] Alternate stories
- Blue Beetle (Ted Kord) was seen in Alex Ross and Mark Waid's comic Kingdom Come. He is shown with the rest of the Charlton 'Action Heroes' but not as a member of Magog's Justice Battalion, he was part of Batman's group and later of the MLF (Mankind Liberation Front). He would be shown later in the title in a suit of armor powered by the then-mystic scarab, working with Batman's team, before being killed with most of the other heroes by a nuclear explosion.
- Though Blue Beetle did not appear in 2000s animated TV series Justice League Unlimited, he has been featured in the comic book, Justice League Adventures.
[edit] 52 Multiverse
The final issue, #52, of DC Comics' 2006-2007 year-long weekly series 52 revealed that a "Multiverse" system of 52 parallel universes, with each Earth being a different take on established DC Comics characters as featured in the mainstream continuity (designated as "New Earth") had come into existence. The Multiverse acts as a storytelling device that allows writers to introduce alternate versions of fictional characters, hypothesize "what if?" scenarios, revisit popular Elseworlds stories and allow these characters to interact with the mainstream continuity. For example, the Ted Kord of the Kingdom Come limited series is said to reside on Earth-22.
Spin-offs from the series Countdown to Final Crisis would introduce more alternate Blue Beetles in 2007. Earth-19 (the Gotham by Gaslight universe), set in a Victorian-like era, has its own version of Dan Garrett who in his secret identity is the leading Egyptologist at the Gotham Museum of Natural History and wears a monocle, appearing in The Search For Ray Palmer: Gotham By Gaslight. The limited series Countdown: Arena onwards depicted three more for the first time. Firstly, an Earth-26 Blue Beetle: a swarm of sentient insects that form a man-shaped body (calling themselves "The Scarab"), as well as Ted of Earth-33, an anthropomorphic beetle, the pet of Mr. and Mrs. Kord, and Earth-39 Blue Beetle, a younger version of Dan Garret, who has bonded with his scarab in the same way as Jaime Reyes.
[edit] Other media
[edit] Radio
The Blue Beetle had a relatively short career on the radio, between May and September of 1940. Motion picture and radio actor Frank Lovejoy was the Blue Beetle for the first 13 episodes, while for the rest of the shows, the voice was provided by a different, uncredited actor. The Blue Beetle was a young police officer who saw the need for extra-ordinary crime fighting. He took the task on himself by secretly donning a superhero costume to create fear in the criminals who were to learn to fear the Blue Beetle's wrath. The 13-minute segments were usually only two-parters, so the stories were often more simple than other popular programs, such as the Superman radio serial.
[edit] Audio
- Kingdom Come audio drama, adapted by John Whitman based on a story by Mark Waid and Alex Ross and the novelization by Elliot S. Maggin (Time Warner Audio Books, 1998)[7]
[edit] Television
- On the PBS children's educational series The Electric Company, the Blue Beetle was a bumbling superhero (played by Jim Boyd) who would often make matters worse instead of better. He wore a mask, a hood with antennae, wings, tennis shoes, boxer shorts, and a t-shirt bearing the name "Blue Beetle."
- Blue Beetle has been confirmed to appear in the upcoming series Batman: The Brave and the Bold.
[edit] Trivia
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Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines. The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones. |
- The DC comic book series Watchmen, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, was originally intended to be portrayed using Charlton Comics characters. The two Nite-Owl characters are based on Dan Garrett and Ted Kord.
- In The Dresden Files, an ongoing series of books by Jim Butcher, Harry Dresden, the main protagonist, drives an ancient VW Bug he dubbed the Blue Beetle.
- AC Comics had used Charlton Comics characters, particularly the Blue Beetle, in the comic title Sentinels of Justice. When the rights for these characters were sold to DC Comics, AC Comics created a second Sentinels of Justice team (writing the first out of continuity), composed of some of its original characters as well as ones from the public domain. Many of these are homages to the Charlton heroes, such as the Scarlet Scorpion (a stand-in for Blue Beetle}.
[edit] Footnotes
- ^ Lou Mougin (indexer). Mystery Men Comics #1. Grand Comics Database. Retrieved on 2007-06-22. Wojtkowski's family has supplied the online comics encyclopedia The Lambiek Comiclopedia with documentation to support the overall Wojtkowski credit. Another artist, Charles Nicholas Cuidera, also drew Blue Beetle stories later, and has claimed to have been the creator, but comics historian credit Wojtkowski.
- ^ In the earliest Golden Age appearances and during the 1967 Ditko run, the original Blue Beetle was referred to as Dan Garret, spelled with one "t."
- ^ Mystery Men Comics #13 ((August 1940)) Fox Feature Syndicate
- ^ Blue Beetle #18 (Nov. 1987)
- ^ Blue Beetle #24 (May. 2008)
- ^ Blue Beetle #24 (May. 2008)
- ^ Shainblum, Mark. SFSite.com: Kingdom Come (review). SF Site. Retrieved on 2007-07-02.
[edit] References
- Don Markstein's Toonopedia: The Blue Beetle and [Dan Garrett 2]
- International Catalogue of Superheroes: Dan Garrett 2
- Index to the Earth-4 adventures of the Charlton Action Heroes
- The Grand Comics Database Project: Blue Beetle
- "Notes from a True Blue Beetlemaniac"
[edit] External links
- The Blue Beetle in The Internet Archive's Old-Time Radio Collection
- Keith Giffen on the new Blue Beetle
- Newsarama interview with artist Cully Hamner on his design for the new Blue Beetle
[edit] Audio
- Original 1940 Blue Beetle Old Time Radio show (free download)
