Blue Beetle (Jaime Reyes)

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Blue Beetle
Jaime Reyes as the third Blue Beetle. Cover of Blue Beetle #2 (2006). Art by Cully Hamner.
Publication information
Publisher	DC Comics
First appearance	As Jaime: Infinite Crisis #3 (Feb. 2006) As Blue Beetle: Infinite Crisis #5 (March 2006)
Created by	Keith Giffen John Rogers Cully Hamner
In-story information
Alter ego	Jaime Reyes
Team affiliations	Teen Titans
Abilities	Alien suit of powered armor.

Blue Beetle (Jaime Reyes) is a fictional character who appears in comic books published by DC Comics. The character first appears in Infinite Crisis #3 (Feb. 2006), and was created by writers Keith Giffen and John Rogers, and artist Cully Hamner.^[1]

Contents 1 Publication history 2 Fictional character biography 2.1 Infinite Crisis 2.2 Ongoing series 2.3 The Reach 2.4 Teen Titans 2.5 Series' End 2.6 Further adventures 3 Powers and abilities 4 Collected editions 5 In other media 5.1 Television 5.2 Video games 6 References 7 External links

[edit] Publication history

In Infinite Crisis #5 (March 2006), the character became the third incarnation of the superhero Blue Beetle. His own monthly series debuted a month later, with Blue Beetle (vol. 7) #1 (May 2006).^[2] and was initially written by Keith Giffen and John Rogers,^[3] with artist Cully Hamner.^[4] Giffen left in issue #10 and Rogers took over full writing duties, joined by a new artist, Rafael Albuquerque.^[5] Rogers had to leave the title in issue #25, in order to concentrate on his television series Leverage^[6].

After a couple of fill-in issues Matt Sturges became the main writer in issue #29^[7] but the series was cancelled with the last issue scheduled to be #36 in February 2009.^[8] Editor Dan DiDio put the cancellation down to poor sales and said that Blue Beetle was "a book that we started with very high expectations, but it lost its audience along the way."^[9]

On March 12, 2009, DiDio announced that the character would be brought back to print in June 2009 as a "co-feature" of the more popular "Booster Gold" comic.^[10] Whether the creative team would remain intact or be replaced was unclear but DiDio indicated that the stories would pick up on dangling plot threads from the recently-canceled series.

[edit] Fictional character biography

Jaime (pronounced "HI-may") 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 so far, feeling Jaime should focus on his studies and enjoy his childhood for as long as he can. Jaime has an acute sense of responsibility for his family and friends, though he complains about being the one to sort out any messes.^[2]

[edit] Infinite Crisis

The mystical Blue Beetle scarab which had given Dan Garrett his powers had been thought destroyed. When it was found intact, it was given to Ted Kord, who was never able to use it. After an attack by Brother Eye, the scarab appeared energized, and Ted brought it to the wizard Shazam, who took it and sent Ted away. Shortly thereafter, in the Day of Vengeance storyline, Shazam was killed and the scarab was blasted across the globe, along with shards from the Rock of Eternity.^[2]

The Blue Beetle scarab came to Earth in El Paso, Texas, where it was picked up by Jaime. Not long after, Booster Gold appeared at Jaime's house to retrieve the scarab, only to discover that it had fused itself to Jaime's spine while the teenager had been sleeping. Booster recruited Jaime for Batman's assault on the Brother Eye satellite, since the scarab was the only thing that could see the satellite. Using the scarab's powers, Jaime was able to find the satellite and reveal it to Batman's group, enabling them to defeat it. Once Brother Eye was sent plummeting Earthward, Jaime disappeared from the ship, apparently teleported away by the scarab, which sought to escape the Green Lanterns on board.

[edit] Ongoing series

Jaime was next seen in his own ongoing monthly series, fighting off Green Lantern Guy Gardner, who had been driven to rage by his ring's reaction to the Blue Beetle scarab. A flashback expanded on Jaime's initial discovery of the scarab, revealing how the scarab bonded itself to Jaime and showing his first encounter with a metahuman. After the fight, Jaime found himself alone and naked in the middle of the desert, and had to hitch-hike home. Upon his return, Jaime discovered he had been missing for a whole year. Unlike most superheroes who keep their identities hidden from all but the closest of associates, Jaime's family and friends know Jaime is the current Blue Beetle.

He has since began a career as a superhero, meeting Oracle, the Phantom Stranger, and the current Peacemaker during his early adventures. He often associates himself with a group known as the Posse, a street gang of local superhumans with powers of magical origin. Blue Beetle's support team have also recently agreed to help Jaime keep track of crime and natural disasters in the Midwest via the Internet.

Contrary to Jaime's initial belief, the scarab is revealed to be a piece of extraterrestrial technology. However, magical influences involving the first contact with Earthmen left the scarab "corrupted", and unable to be controlled by the Reach of Space Sector 2. Guy Gardner returned and revealed to Jaime how the Reach and the Green Lantern Corps had battled in the past, forcing the Reach into a truce. The Reach however continued pursuing their invasion plans offering the Scarab as a "protector", and then forcibly turning his host into the vanguard of their attack. This would imply that the Scarab's fully functional A.I. acts as an agent for the Reach. As Jaime's scarab has only a partly functioning A.I., falling more and more into his control and forming an alliance with him, the Reach changed their agenda into feigning friendship with Jaime and the Earth, attacking him in a more subversive manner.

[edit] The Reach

The Reach are ancient enemies of the Guardians of the Universe; however, their pact with the Guardians forbids them from invading any new cultures, including Earth.^[11] Jaime has recently sought help from S.T.A.R. Labs in order to find out about the scarab's full power. The Reach also appear to be enemies of the Controllers; Jaime's scarab suit is seen reacting violently to a Darkstars uniform worn by the current Manhunter Kate Spencer.^[12]

In a Countdown to Final Crisis tie-in, Jaime assists Traci Thirteen in foiling Eclipso's attempt to kidnap a baby with great magical potential and use it as a new, uncorrupted host. In the aftermath, Jaime and Traci kiss, hinting at a relationship starting between the two.

Jaime takes the fight to The Reach, using the time-warping qualities of the Bleed to attack three of their machines at once. When this fails, Jaime attacks the Reach's flagship, but the Reach use their weapons to attack Jaime's home. Jaime's emotional outburst at this attack allows the Reach to shut down the scarab and remove it from Jaime. Jaime is thrown into a holding cell while the Scarab is taken for examination on the bridge. However, the scarab transfers its knowledge into Jaime before removal, allowing the young hero to break out of his cell. Meanwhile, Jaime's family, having escaped the attack, are protected from further Reach assault by Peacemaker, the Posse, Traci Thirteen, La Dama, and later, Guy Gardner, Fire, and Ice. Attacking several guards and taking their armor, Jaime heads for the engine, forcing the Reach to shut it down, revealing their ship. Once captured and brought to the bridge, Jaime shouts "Khaji Da!".^[13] He then reveals that during the time spent with him, the scarab has gained a personality of its own, and fully detached itself from the Reach hive-mind. Claiming Khaji Da (the combined utterance of Khaji, the codeword for Infiltrator and Da, its own serial number) as its name, the scarab has sided with Reyes against the Reach. As the battle continues, and the Reach Negotiator in retaliation for his defeat unleashes a doomsday device on Earth, Jaime and the scarab agree to sacrifice themselves to stop the superweapon from destroying Jamie's home planet. At the last moment, Booster Gold appears and saves them both. The bond with the scarab stronger than ever, Jamie is left to wonder if other scarabs will gain a personality due to Khaji Da talking to them about individuality.^[14]

[edit] Teen Titans

Jaime first teams up with the Titans in Teen Titans #50/Blue Beetle #18, fighting Lobo along with the group to ensure the launch of a satellite armed with anti-Reach technology. The Reach themselves apparently hire Lobo to keep their facade as benevolent protectors; however, at last, Batman and the Teen Titans believe Jaime. Although Jamie is criticized for his lack of formal training, the Titans extend an invitation to visit and perhaps at a later time join the team. The Reach later attempt to remove Jaime from the equation, combining the missing A.I. of Jamie's scarab, a new scarab, and a Sinestro Corps Power Ring into the Peacemaker, forcing him to cut the scarab from his spine in order to ensure that his scarab could not be used as a weapon again.

Jaime comes face to face with the Spectre, along with Luis, the man who had been responsible for Jaime's father being crippled. After a visit from his quasi-girlfriend Traci Thirteen, Jaime realizes that he cannot stop the Spectre from executing the inmates. Jaime is forced to forgive Luis and try to reason with the Spectre. Partially successful, The Spectre warns Jaime that if he ever lets the Scarab kill, The Spectre will come for him.

During the "Titans of Tomorrow, Today!" arc in Teen Titans, Jaime takes the Titans up on their offer to visit, only to find that an alternate future version of the Titans have attacked the Tower and managed to kidnap key members of the Justice League. He later proves instrumental in the Titans' victory against their future selves and proves himself to be a competent hero by incapacitating the Future Flash, and freeing the Justice League. He also aids the Titans in defeating Starro. During much of the conflict with the future Titans, Jaime is actively attacked by the adult version of Kid Devil, Red Devil, who claims that Jaime cannot be trusted.

Jaime is recruited by Black Beetle (who originally identifies himself as a Blue Beetle from the future), and Dan Garrett to go into the past with Booster Gold in order to prevent Ted Kord's death. After saving Kord, and sending Jaime and Garrett back, the future is revealed to be a dystopia ruled by Maxwell Lord, who was now never exposed and defeated. Black Beetle is also revealed to be a future enemy of Jaime's, who tries to create this future so he will never have to deal with Jaime, and so he "wouldn't lose her". In Booster Gold #10, seeing the damage that was already done by their actions, Ted decides to accept his death and returns to the past, seemingly to the exact moment where he was murdered by Maxwell Lord, returning the time line to equilibrium and thus preventing the future they had witnessed, however, in the epilogue for Booster Gold #1.000.000, a figure with a scarab enters a Kord Industries building which contains a Bug and a picture of Kord's enemy Overthrow among other things. It is hinted by his trademark laugh "Bwa-ha-ha" that it is actually Ted, who somehow escaped death but managed to fix the timestream and return to the present.

Jaime has recently been seen battling Shockwave, who reveals that Kord Industries is now owned by the 100. He again came into conflict with Kid Devil, who still harbored a grudge against him because of both the future Titans incident and his status with Ravager. Jaime tries to mend fences with Kid Devil, but to no avail at first since their squabbling allowed Shockwave to escape. But during their second battle with him, Kid Devil managed to tap into his demonic powers and partially melted Shockwave's armor, enabling both boys to defeat him in a concerted effort. This seems to help squelch the ill feelings between them. Then Kid Devil asks Jaime if he's heard from Ravager, and Jaime replies that he's faced down an entire alien race, but Ravager scares him. Kid Devil finally realizes that Jaime is being sincere and they shake hands and tell each other their real names. Later at Titans Tower Robin offers Jamie full-membership into the Teen Titans, to which Jamie finally feels ready to accept. Soon after when Kid Devil officially takes the new name of Red Devil, Jaime deals out some good-natured teasing about his new costume, calling him the "Crimson Jazzercizer". Red Devil chases after him, both of them with smiles on their faces.^[15]

In the aftermath of the massive Final Crisis crossover event, Kid Eternity, Static, and Aquagirl join up with the team after being rescued from the Dark Side Club. Despite some initial friction with Static, the two eventually become friends. Aquagirl begins hitting on Jaime despite knowing of his relationship with Traci, often speaking to him in Spanish in order to hide her intentions to the rest of the team. Despite feeling an attration toward her, he chooses to remain loyal to Traci.

After Wonder Girl is kidnapped by the Fearsome Five, Beetle reluctantly allows Traci to assist the team in rescuing her. In the aftermath of the rescue mission, Red Devil is killed saving the city from a nuclear explosion, and Jaime is shown at his funeral, mourning his close friend.^[16]

When Beast Boy arrives at Titans Tower in order to take over leadership of the team, Jaime acts distrustfully of him, going so far as to accuse him of caring more about winning Raven's love than helping the team.^[17]

[edit] Series' End

A group of Reach infiltrators and a negotiator invade Jaime's school's dance. Having been inspired by the Scarab to rebel against their masters, the group, calling themselves the "Kahji Dha Revolutionary Army", set out to make Earth safe by destroying all those that could pose any threat, no matter how small, to the planet. When Jaime tries to stop them, they see him as a threat, and attack.^[18] During the fight, Nadia, one of Jaime's tech support, is killed. Taking the fight into orbit, Jaime has the Scarab hack into and deactivate the KDRA, unfortunately deactivating itself for 27 days in the process. The negotiator quickly recovers, and Jaime is forced to take him on a kamikaze dive onto the Earth's surface. The impact kills the negotiator and badly hurts Jaime, although the Scarab put up a shield that protected him from the brunt of the impact. Over a period of weeks, Jaime and the Scarab slowly recover. The scarab of the negotiator had, unbeknownst to Jaime, been recovered by Hector, Jaime's other tech support, who, as he left the country, used the negotiator's name "Djo Zha" which a stewardess confuses with "Joshua", indicating that he had bonded with it.^[19]

[edit] Further adventures

Starting in Booster Gold #21, Blue Beetle was featured as a 10-page ongoing co-feature. The stories focused on a smaller cast than the ongoing did, focusing on Jaime, Paco and Brenda while having Jaime's family pop up on occasion. In these stories, the rebooted scarab is shown to be much more bloodthirsty then it was, constantly urging Jaime to use more lethal weaponry. In the first serial, Jaime faced off against the android daughter of an old supervillain.

Jaime then faced an attack from the Black Beetle, in the middle of a family hike. During the battle, Black Beetle claimed to be the future incarnation of Hector, wanting revenge for Nadia's death, only to immediately retract his statement, claiming to have killed Hector and taken his scarab. When Milagro was injured by Black Beetle, Jaime lost his temper, finally giving in to the Scarab's suggestions of using lethal force.^[20] Jaime eventually managed to use tachyon beams to paralyse Black Beetle, only for the villain to claim that he was Jaime from the future, and that he would don the black scarab after Milagro (who would suffer brain damage from the injury she had just received in the present) destroyed the blue scarab. Jaime, deciding to get Milagro medical attention as quickly as possible, was forced to let Black Beetle escape. Before he departed, Black Beetle said to Jaime: "When you see Ted Kord, tell him I said "drop dead"". When Jaime stated that Ted was already dead, Black Beetle replied "Yeah. I know". A few days later, Milagro is shown to be recovering in hospital, and Jaime is left deeply disturbed by his encounter.^[20]

Blue Beetle also teamed up with egotistical superhero Hardware in order to bring down a group of criminals using tech stolen from the late Edwin Alva by the second Gizmo. Despite finding Hardware extremely difficult to work with, the two took down the criminals and depart on friendly terms.^[21]

Not much later, he was visited by Skeets, Booster Gold's robotic partner, who warned him of his disappearance. Deciding to team up with the small machine to find Booster as a form of paying respect to him for introducing him to the superhero world, he reaches the house of Rose Levin and Daniel Carter, Booster's ancestors from the 21st century. However, soon after he arrives, the Black Lantern Ted Kord crashes his ship into Daniel's house, and Jaime proceeds to battle Kord. Although outmatched and insulted by the Black Lantern, Jaime keeps fighting until Booster enters the scene.^[22]

Later, both team up to destroy the Black Lantern, succeeding by blasting him with a special light gun designed by Ted Kord and separating him from the ring. Then, they seize the remains into the Time Sphere and taking the lifeless corpse to Vanishing Point Fortress, in the last second of the universe. There, Jaime promises to eventually live up to the legacy of the Blue Beetle and eventually reestablish the Blue & Gold Team.^[23]

[edit] Powers and abilities

The Blue Beetle scarab is grafted onto Jaime's spine, and can manifest a number of powers at its own volition, an act usually accompanied by blue energy emitted by the scarab's "antennae". Over the course of the first year of his ongoing series, Jaime had little, if any, control over those powers, but slowly began to assert himself over the suit after this first year. When Jaime is in danger, the scarab activates, crawling out on to Jaime's back and generating a high-tech suit of powered armor around his body. The armor is resilient enough that it can protect Jaime against atmospheric re-entry from Earth's orbit. When the danger passes, the scarab deactivates, dissolving the costume and retracting back onto Jaime's spine, causing intense pain.

When in use, the suit can reconfigure itself to produce a wide array of armaments. Common functions include an energy cannon, a sword and shield, a grappling hook, an advanced satellite of some sort, and a set of foot-long powered blades that can shear through tree trunks. In addition, the suit can produce a set of wings for flight, which can also act as shields. Jaime alludes to weapons which may be powerful enough to harm even the Spectre, one of DC's more powerful characters, claiming that some of the weapons were of W.M.D. caliber, but Jaime's refusal to use lethal force keeps him from making use of them.^[24] The suit can adapt its technology to different situations: such adaptations include producing energy discharges from the hands that can neutralize magic, discharging Kryptonite radiation, negating "vibrational frequencies" of extra-dimensional objects to make them visible, and other assorted functions. The suit has been observed to create armaments of different composition and style. The wings, for example, were initially composed of the same blue opaque armor of which the rest of the suit is composed, but beginning with Blue Beetle #12 (April 2007), they began manifesting themselves in the form of a colorless, translucent material. Whether this is due to changes in the suit's capabilities or Jaime's intent has not been made clear. The scarab also apparently has the ability to track anything or anyone it has previously encountered.

The scarab has at least one power it can manifest whether dormant or active; it can give Jaime a peculiar form of "sight" to perceive extra-dimensional objects. This sight is apparently intended to give the scarab's user information on adversaries. The scarab is able to communicate with him in a more comprehensible fashion if need be. The scarab's language of communication has slowly morphed into a format resembling English, claiming Khaji Da as its own name and Jaime as its first real friend.^[14] However, it has occasional relapses in his original language.^[14] The suit is capable, through some unspecified mechanism or process, of compensating for the digestive system of Jaime's body, so that he does not need to expel waste materials when the suit is in use, even able to make paper out of dead skin cells the suit collects.^[25]

The scarab exhibits a reluctance to harm nature, as evidenced in Blue Beetle #4, in which Jaime is attacked by a pair of anthropomorphized trees, and the suit declines to use great force against them, until Jaime convinces the scarab that his life is in danger and wrests control over the suit. Jaime destroys the trees, though the scarab expresses its displeasure at this.

[edit] Collected editions

The Blue Beetle series has been collected into a number of trade paperbacks:

Vol. #	Title	Collected material	Pages	ISBN
1	Shellshocked	Blue Beetle vol. 6, #1–6	144	ISBN 1-4012-0965-3
2	Road Trip	Blue Beetle vol. 6, #7–12	144	ISBN 978-1-4012-1361-9
3	Reach For The Stars	Blue Beetle vol. 6, #13–19	168	ISBN 1-4012-1642-0
4	End Game	Blue Beetle vol. 6, #20–26	176	ISBN 1-4012-1952-9
5	Boundaries	Blue Beetle vol. 6, #29–34	144	ISBN 1-4012-2162-9

[edit] In other media

[edit] Television

• Jaime Reyes is a featured character in "Rise of the Blue Beetle!", Episode 1 of the 2008 animated series Batman: The Brave and the Bold voiced by Will Friedle. Having met previously, Batman enlists Jaime in helping him with a crisis in Earth's orbit. Batman admits he could ask Green Lantern but he wants to see whether or not Jaime has the potential to become a true hero. Instead, the scarab opens a worm hole and transports the pair to a planet where diminutive aliens worship the Beetle armor. With Batman's help, Jaime has to lead the aliens to find the power within themselves to defeat their enemy, Kanjar Ro. He later appears in the opening sequence in "Invasion of the Secret Santas!" helping Batman take on Sportsmaster and his henchmen. During the battle, Jaime is seen arguing with the scarab, revealing that it just recently started talking to him. This led to an awkward moment when Batman instructed him to take on the henchmen and then the scarab said something to him and he told the scarab "Don't tell me what to do, Goober!". Much like in the comics, when Jamie asks the scarab for help, its first choice is overkill and Jaime has to tell it to pick a less dangerous option. After the Sportsmaster is defeated Blue Beetle offers Batman to Christmas dinner at his family's house but Batman declines.^[26] He again appears in "Fall of the Blue Beetle!" where he teams up with Batman and learns about what happened to his predecessor, and defeating Jarvis Kord when they fought him on Science Island. This version of the Blue Beetle has an Injustice Syndicate parallel world counterpart, Scarlet Scarab (also voiced by Will Friedle) as seen in the episode "Deep Cover for Batman!". This version is very disturbing, as he claims to have the heart of a hero in a jar in his closet. The real Jaime appears in "Game Over for Owlman!" hunting Batman when Owlman poses as him and commits crimes.^[27] His first appearance in season two is the main plot of "Night of the Huntress". Jaime is about to enter Gotham University when a breakout happens caused by Babyface. He comes along with Batman and Huntress to stop Baby-Face and his wife. He starts to develop a crush on Huntress who, when not doing superhero duties, is a professor at the university. This can occasionally inhibit his judgment and abilities as the Blue Beetle.

[edit] Video games

• Jaime Reyes (as Blue Beetle) is set to appear in the upcoming MMORPG DC Universe Online.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Blue Beetle's secret origin on dccomics.com
• Blue Beetle (Jaime Reyes) at the DC Datase Project