Superhero as Survivor: The Blue Beetle Is Thriving

Now in theaters, “Blue Beetle” features the titular superhero single-handedly fighting an entire army of bad guys, saving his family from dire consequences, and rescuing a beautiful leading lady from her very wicked Auntie, played by the most wicked Susan Sarandon. Yet the Blue Beetle’s most remarkable superpower is being able to stay alive and keep in the action, even after 85 years.To a certain degree, the Blue Beetle, who first appeared in 1939, has managed to stick around for all this time — virtually the entire history of comic books — by keeping a low profile. He was part of the very first generation of superheroes, but in all of his many incarnations, he was never a first-tier character to challenge Superman or Spiderman. Even today, “Blue Beetle” is a sizable box office and critical hit, but it’s not likely to dominate the conversation like another long-running pop culture phenomenon, “Barbie,” or even the latest “Guardians of the Galaxy” installment.The Blue Beetle also has the advantage of being completely fluid as a character: different alter egos, different costumes, different super powers — and many times no actual powers at all. He also rarely stops being reminiscent of other costumed heroes, even though in many cases he predates them.In the Blue Beetle’s first appearance, in “Mystery Men” #1 (August 1939), supposedly written by Will Eisner, he is a dead ringer for the legendary character that Eisner created a few months later, the Spirit. Drawn by Charles Nicholas, he dresses in an ordinary business suit with a fedora, only with a mask and a creepy-looking beetle scarab for a necktie. As with the Spirit, the look is a kind of compromise between a costumed hero and a film noir detective like Sam Spade.This original Blue Beetle was Dan Garrett, a “rookie cop” who put on a disguise to fight criminals on his own time. By the time of the war, the Beetle had started wearing something more like the traditional superhero spandex. In the original run published by the independent Fox Comics, he looks and acts like a cross between the Phantom and Captain America, and he typically fought Nazi saboteurs and Japanese spies. Like Superman, he had a female reporter for a love interest, Joan Mason, who starred in her own stories as well.The Beetle was published intermittently throughout the 1940s, making it through 60 issues. During the so-called Silver Age of comics, the Blue Beetle was revived by Charleston Comics, originally as a secondary feature in “Captain Atom” in 1966, but then enjoyed his own short-lived series. This was an entirely different character, created by Steve Ditko of Spiderman and Dr. Strange fame, and the stories benefitted from Ditko’s lavish visual imagination. Beetle 2.0 was Ted Kord, a Bruce Wayne-like millionaire who fights crime with copious gadgets including a Beetle-shaped vehicle that was a combination airship and robot. The Ted Kord Blue Beetle was eventually acquired by DC Comics, where he had another off-and-on career for almost 25 years. The Blue Beetle finally morphed into his most durable incarnation in 2006. The latest Beetle parallels the current Ms. Marvel, who was rebooted from yet another blonde-haired, blue-eyed crimefighter and transformed into the world’s first Muslim superhero. In going ethnic and adding some diversity to the character, creators Keith Giffen, John Rogers, and Cully Hamner re-energized the entire franchise and led to its most popular phase — and first on-screen adaptation.The current Blue Beetle is Jaime Reys, a Mexican American who, like Billy Batson in “Shazam,” another Golden Age comics icon eventually acquired by DC, becomes a superhero entirely by accident and takes a long time to become comfortable with the role. As more or less faithfully adapted in the Ángel Manuel Soto film, this is the most powerful Beetle of them all; he easily, albeit accidentally, slices a bus in half. The 2023 Beetle movie nails all the tropes of Marvel-age hero pictures, including a long third act that is, as usual, essentially two CGI robots stomping each other for 20 minutes. Yet it’s saved by devoting a lot of time to the Beetle’s Latino family, so much so that it practically could be titled, “My Big Fat Mexican Superhero Movie.” Screenwriter Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer also retained the Ted Kord character as part of the Beetle’s backstory — romantic interest Bruna Marquezine is playing Kord’s daughter — which will hopefully pay off in follow-up films.The movie is worth watching less for the effects and action sequences than for the the interplay between Xolo Maridueña as Jaime Reyes and George Lopez as his wacky but inventive uncle Rudy — who praises the earlier Blue Beetle even while denouncing Batman as a fascist — and even more with Adriana Barraza as Jaime’s bazooka-wielding abuela, who is gradually shown to have a secret past as a revolutionary. Hopefully, those aspects will be developed more in sequels. The stress on family and diversity — without becoming “woke,” whatever that means — is what makes “Blue Beetle” something more than the expected round of tights, fights, and flights.

Superhero as Survivor: The Blue Beetle Is Thriving

Superhero as Survivor: The Blue Beetle Is Thriving

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