Mr. John Rogers has built up some parallels between the current Blue Beetle series and Countdown to Infinite Crisis. That's not meant as a criticism, by the way, I think he's done an excellent job setting it up, and I find it very interesting.
Jaime Reyes is currently embroiled in a battle to protect the Earth from a threat no one else recognizes, similar to Ted Kord's efforts against Checkmate. Jaime's pitted against the Reach, who put forth a friendly face to hide their ulterior motives, much the way Max Lord was always pretending to at least be moderately decent, when he was really trying to sabotage the Justice League because he's a self-loathing metahuman, apparently (which sounds a bit more Marvel-style than DC). Jaime's loved ones narrowly escaped death from above, the same goes for Booster. Jaime and Ted both infiltrated their enemies bases, then got captured. Jaime's had a bit more success since the initial capture, but to be fair, he also had a better idea of what he was up against than Ted did. Jaime, as host for the scarab, was supposed to be a loyal servant of the Reach, but bucked the trend. Ted was unaware Max had put him on the Justice League to help make it look bad (I think Greg Burgas is right, the Giffen/DeMatteis Justice Leagues don't seem to get much respect as heroes. Maybe that's deserved, I don't know, seems a bit harsh), but winds up being the one that exposes Lord's little scheme (by getting shot in the head and having his goggles mailed to batman by Sasha, but not every plan can be a winner, you know).
One interesting thing to me Jaime's large supporting cast, that believe in him and have his back when trouble arises, whereas Ted only had Booster (and Diana was willing to at least listen to him). You'd think that given Ted having been in the business longer, he'd have more people who'd be eager to help, but he mostly got blown off (which was partially to serve the plot, I'm sure). Maybe it has something to do with Jaime doing most of his work in his hometown, and establishing connections with people there, so that there are people close enough to actual be useful in an emergency, or maybe it's a lesson about how adult are self-absorbed assholes, which makes them unwilling to help their friends, unlike teenagers (if you've read their title, you realize the current Teen Titans would be an exception to that).
So hey, Blue Beetle tag now.
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3 comments:
Ted's goggles?
That never happened. Files were merely sent to Batman from an unknown source.
Ted's body wasn't ever found either, so, who knows what happened.
Also, best not to speak ill of Max what with all those OMACs around.
Poor Ted also had the unfortunate luck of having Batman more or less working against him, which rather stunk. A lot of his old buddies from the JLI weren't around either, such as Ice, while Guy was off in spaaaaaaace with Kyle at the time. Also, J'onn was being almost as big a jerk as Batman.
Jaime is lucky and smart enough to have active allies, plus he has the knowledge of what happened to Ted. Since Guy passed on Ted's books and such, and also through his contact with Dan Garrett's decedent, whatsername, Jaime has been doing his homework about the legacy of the Blue Beetles. And it's PAYING OFF!
See? See? I TOLD you it was good!
anonymous: You're right, I should have put something in there that referred to the Booster Gold-induced changes to history. I'm not convinced that history won't reassert itself somehow down the line.
sallyp: Very well, I bow before your brilliance.
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