Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Reading Room: BLUE BEETLE "UnMasked"

We start our original Blue Beetle run with his final tale...
...where he does a credible Superman imitation, complete with nosy girl reporter!
Gee, Clark...I mean Dan...to think that crook thought you were Super...I mean the Blue Beetle...
Yeah, it's pretty lame.
You'll note the Blue Beetle has pretty much the standard range of super-powers at this point, including strength, flight, and limited invulnerability, all apparently due to the Vitamin 2-X he had been taking since Mystery Men Comics #1 (1939).
Though the art is credited to Charles Nichols (pencils) and Sal Trapani (inks), I seriously doubt Trapani did the inking.
This story in Charlton's Nature Boy #3 (1956) was the last appearance of Dan Garret, the Golden Age Blue Beetle.

The next appearance (with totally-new origin) of any Blue Beetle, would be eight years later in Blue Beetle V2 N1 (1964) with the debut of archeologist Dan Garrett (note the extra "t"), who would discover a mystic scarab that transformed him into The Blue Beetle!
Garrett passed his Blue Beetle identity (though not the scarab-based powers) on to student Ted Kord only two years later.

But when you next see the Blue Beetle here, it'll be his first appearance, from Mystery Men Comics #1, with a radically-different costume and modus operandi!

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