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Blue Beetle (Jaime Reyes)

Comic book superhero From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Blue Beetle (Jaime Reyes)
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Jaime Reyes is a superhero appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. Created by Keith Giffen, John Rogers, and Cully Hamner,[1] the character made his first appearance in Infinite Crisis #3 (February 2006). Jaime Reyes is the third character to assume the mantle of Blue Beetle, but is substantially different from his predecessors.

Quick Facts Jaime Reyes, Publication information ...

Introduced in 1939, the original Blue Beetle, Dan Garret, was a Fox Comics police officer who fought crime with superpowers gained by ingesting Vitamin 2X. A revamped version of this character, archaeologist Dan Garrett, introduced in 1964 by Charlton Comics drew mystical abilities from an ancient Egyptian scarab. Published by Charlton Comics and later DC, 1966 creation Ted Kord was Garrett's student who continued his legacy of costumed crime-fighting, although he had no superpowers.

DC's introduction of Jaime Reyes in 2006 retconned and expanded upon the Blue Beetle mythos. Revealed to be alien in origin, the scarab bonds with Reyes shortly after Kord's death and provides him with a suit of extraterrestrial armor. Though only a teenager, Reyes quickly forms a working relationship with Kord's former teammate and best friend Booster Gold and is inducted into the Teen Titans and the Justice League.

Blue Beetle has appeared in various media outside comics. Will Friedle, Eric Lopez, Jake T. Austin, and others have voiced the character in animated television series and films. Jaren Brandt Bartlett portrayed the character in a 2011 episode of the television series Smallville, and Xolo Maridueña portrayed the character in the 2023 live-action film Blue Beetle, set in the DC Extended Universe, and will continue to play the character in the rebooted DC Universe (DCU) franchise.

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Publication history

Jaime Reyes debuted as Blue Beetle in Infinite Crisis #5 (March 2006). His own monthly series debuted two months later with Blue Beetle vol. 7 #1 (May 2006);[2] it was initially written by Keith Giffen and John Rogers,[3] with artist Cully Hamner.[4] Giffen left before issue #10 and Rogers took over full writing duties, joined by artist Rafael Albuquerque.[5] Rogers left in issue #25 to concentrate on his television series Leverage.

After a couple of fill-in issues, Lilah Sturges became the main writer in issue #29.[6] The series was canceled with issue #36 in February 2009.[7] Editor Dan DiDio attributed the cancellation 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".[8]

The character returned in June 2009 as a "co-feature" of the more popular Booster Gold comic.[9]

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Fictional character biography

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Jaime lives in El Paso, Texas, and is the son of Alberto Reyes and Bianca Reyes and the brother of Milagro Reyes. Jaime has an acute sense of responsibility for his immediate family and friends Paco and Brenda Del Vecchio, though he complains about having to sort out their problems.[2] He derives strength and courage from his family's support, wanting what is best for them.

During the Day of Vengeance storyline, the wizard Shazam is killed by the Spectre. The mystical scarab in Shazam's possession, which formerly belonged to Dan Garrett, is blasted across the Earth and lands in El Paso, where it bonds to Jaime.[2] Booster Gold recruits Jaime to help Batman attack Brother Eye, since the Scarab has the ability to detect it. Once Brother Eye is destroyed, Jaime is teleported away by the scarab, which seeks to escape the Green Lanterns on board.

Ongoing series

Jaime was next seen in his own monthly series, fighting off Green Lantern Guy Gardner, who had been driven to rage by his ring's reaction to the scarab. A flashback expanded on Jaime's discovery of the scarab, revealing how the scarab bonded itself to Jaime and showing his first encounter with a metahuman. After that fight with Guy, Jaime found himself alone and naked in the desert and had to hitchhike home. Upon his return, Jaime discovered he had been missing for a year because the scarab used a dimensional mode of transport to return to Earth. Unlike most superheroes, Jaime shared his identity with family and friends.

Contrary to Jaime's initial belief, the scarab is revealed to be an extraterrestrial weapon created by the alien Reach. However, magical influences left the scarab "corrupted" and uncontrollable by the Reach. 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 his home. Jaime's emotional outburst at this attack allows the Reach to shut down the scarab and remove it from Jaime. However, the scarab transfers its knowledge into Jaime before removal, allowing him to escape.

Jaime's family, having escaped the attack, are protected by Peacemaker, Traci Thirteen, Guy Gardner, Fire, and Ice. After attacking several guards and taking their armor, Jaime reunites with the scarab, who names itself Khaji Da and sides with him against the Reach.[10] As the battle continues, the Reach Negotiator unleashes a doomsday device on Earth in retaliation for his defeat. Jaime and the scarab agree to sacrifice themselves to stop the superweapon. At the last moment, Booster Gold appears and saves them both.[11]

Teen Titans

Jaime first teams up with the Titans when they battle Lobo, who the Reach have hired to maintain their facade as benevolent protectors.[12] Although criticizing Jaime for his lack of formal training, the Titans extend an invitation to visit and perhaps join the team. During the "Titans of Tomorrow, Today!" arc, 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 captured several members of the Justice League. He later proves instrumental in the younger Titans' victory against their future selves.

Jaime is recruited by Black Beetle (who originally identifies himself as a Blue Beetle from the future) and Garrett to go into the past with Booster Gold to prevent Ted Kord's death. After saving Kord, Jaime and Garrett return, and the future is revealed to be a dystopia ruled by Maxwell Lord, who now was never exposed and defeated. Seeing the damage done by their actions, Kord decides to accept his death and returns to the past, restoring the timeline.

Jaime comes 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 their squabbling allows Shockwave to escape. After working with Jaime to defeat Shockwave, Kid Devil realizes that he is being sincere. The two reconcile and reveal their secret identities to each other. Later, at Titans Tower, Robin offers Jaime full-membership, which he finally feels ready to accept.[13]

Series finale

A group of Reach infiltrators and a negotiator invade Jaime's school's dance. Having been inspired by the scarab to rebel, the "Kahji Dha Revolutionary Army" (KDRA), sets out to make Earth safe by destroying those that could pose any threat. They see Jaime as a threat and attack.[14] During the fight, Nadia, part of Jaime's tech support, is killed. Taking the fight into orbit, Jaime has the scarab hack into and deactivate the KDRA, but deactivates itself for 27 days in the process. The negotiator quickly recovers and Jaime is forced to take him on a kamikaze dive to the Earth's surface. The impact kills the negotiator and badly hurts Jaime, although the scarab protects him from the brunt of the impact. Over a period of weeks, Jaime and the scarab slowly recover. Unbeknowst to Jaime, the Reach negotiator's scarab is recovered by Hector, Jaime's other tech support.[15]

Further adventures

Starting in Booster Gold vol. 2 #21, Blue Beetle was featured as a 10-page ongoing co-feature. The stories focused on a smaller cast than before, focusing on Jaime, Paco and Brenda while Jaime's family occasionally appears. The rebooted scarab is shown to be more bloodthirsty than in the past, constantly urging Jaime to use more lethal weaponry. Jaime encounters Black Beetle, who claims to be his future self and injures Milagro Reyes.[16] Soon after, Jaime is attacked by Ted Kord, who has been resurrected as a Black Lantern. Jaime and Booster Gold work together to destroy Kord with a special light gun that separates him from his Black Lantern ring.[17]

Justice League: Generation Lost

During the Brightest Day event, Deadman has a vision of Jaime shaking hands with Maxwell Lord, who is holding a gun behind his back.[18] Jaime informs Static that he plans to briefly leave to visit his family, fearing what would happen if he were to die without saying goodbye.[19] Shortly after arriving home, Jaime and his family are attacked by a squad of OMACs.[20] Jaime repels the OMACs, but is accidentally sucked into a teleportation rift that they created. The heroes end up in Russia, where Jaime learns of Lord and his attempt to make the world forget he ever existed. He agrees to help the former Justice League members bring Lord to justice.[21]

The New 52

In September 2011 after the conclusion of the "Flashpoint" storyline event, DC Comics cancelled all of its monthly books and relaunched 52 new monthly titles with a new continuity, in what was called The New 52. One of the new series as a Blue Beetle series written by Tony Bedard and drawn by Ig Guara and cancelled in February 2013.

Jaime Reyes and his friend Paco are driving to a party when a fight over a backpack between some men and the Brotherhood of Evil members Phobia, Plasmus, and Warp erupts from a nearby building. To protect Paco, Jaime grabs the backpack. When La Dama's agents Brutale, Bone-Crusher, and Coyote join the fight, Brutale throws a knife at the backpack. The scarab inside is set off and Jaime is transformed into Blue Beetle.[22]

In Green Lantern: New Guardians, representatives of the Reach attack Odym, homeworld of the Blue Lantern Corps, where it is revealed that their armours have taken control of them; Jaime speculates, during a confrontation with Kyle Rayner, that his armour is damaged, explaining why he is in control of himself where other Reach soldiers are enslaved to their armour.

DC Rebirth

In the 2016 relaunch of the DC Universe, DC Rebirth, Jaime is working with Ted Kord to study the beetle attached to Jaime's back and remove it. Once again, the beetle's origin is retconned, as revealed by Doctor Fate, who tells Kord that the beetle is not alien, but magical, similar to the original continuity pre-Infinite Crisis.[23]

Graduation Day

In the Blue Beetle: Graduation Day miniseries, Jamie is still continuing his superhero duties as Blue Beetle while also finally graduating from high school. During the ceremony, he gets a transmission from the scarab indicating that the Reach are planning something. Afterwards, following a party to celebrate Jaime graduating, Superman and Jaime share a heart to heart about Jamie's uncertainty for his future and what he wants for himself. Superman then informs Jaime that, until they get a better understanding of the Reach broadcast, Jamie is "grounded" from being Blue Beetle and should spend time with his family. Jaime then find out from his parents that, because he is not attending college, he will be heading to Palmera City to work at the family diner for the summer. Then, Paco shows everyone a video of a mysterious Yellow Beetle arriving in Sensuntepeque.[24]

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Powers and abilities

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The Blue Beetle scarab is grafted onto Jaime Reyes's spine and can manifest a number of powers of 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 control over those powers, but slowly asserts himself. 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 him against re-entry from Earth's orbit.[25]

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, a device resembling a communications satellite, and a set of foot-long powered blades. In addition, the suit can produce a set of wings for flight that can also act as shields. The suit can adapt to different situations, including producing energy discharges from the hands that can neutralize magic, discharging Kryptonite radiation and tuning "vibrational frequencies" of extra-dimensional objects to make them visible.

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, which gather information on the scarab user's adversaries. The scarab can communicate with him in a more comprehensible fashion if necessary. The scarab's language slowly morphs into a format resembling English, claiming Khaji Da as its name and Jaime as its friend.[11] However, it has occasional language relapses.[11] The suit is capable of compensating for Jaime's digestive system, so that he does not need to expel waste materials when using the suit, and can even make paper from dead skin cells.[26]

When necessary, Jaime can have the Scarab take over in Infiltrator Mode. When this happens, the suit becomes taller, more muscular and grows spikes and allows the scarab to fight without Jaime's conscience as a restriction. This lets it fight more brutally, but Jaime and the scarab do not like this and only resort to it in desperate situations.

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Other versions

  • A possible future variant of Jaime Reyes appears in Justice Society of America vol. 3 #37-38. This version lost his powers after a group of white supremacists led by Captain Nazi activated their Great Darkness Engine to neutralize most of the world's metahumans. After being taken prisoner by them, he is later killed by security guards while helping his fellow prisoners escape.
  • A possible future variant of Blue Beetle appears in Titans Tomorrow, in which he is killed by Red Devil.
  • An alternate timeline variant of Jaime Reyes appears in Flashpoint. This version is a member of the Ambush Bugs who is later killed amidst a failed attack on the Amazons.[27]
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Collected editions

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

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In other media

Television

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Jaime Reyes / Blue Beetle as he appears in Smallville
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Jaime Reyes / Blue Beetle as he appears in Batman: The Brave and the Bold
  • Jaime Reyes / Blue Beetle appears in the Smallville episode "Booster", portrayed by Jaren Brandt Bartlett.[29] This version is a shy and clumsy teenager from Metropolis who was bullied until he bonded to the Blue Beetle scarab following a traffic accident near Kord Industries. Seeking to find the scarab, Ted Kord hires Booster Gold to help him, leading to the latter fighting Reyes before convincing him to stand up for himself. Kord offers to remove the scarab, but Reyes chooses to keep it and become a hero with his and Booster's help.
  • Jaime Reyes / Blue Beetle appears in Batman: The Brave and the Bold, voiced by Will Friedle,[30][31] while Ioan Gruffudd voices the Scarab.[32]
    • Additionally, an evil alternate universe variant of Reyes called the Scarlet Scarab (also voiced by Friedle) appears in the episode "Deep Cover for Batman!" as a member of the Injustice Syndicate.[33]
  • In 2010, Geoff Johns announced a TV series featuring Jamie Reyes / Blue Beetle,[34][35][36] with a test trailer starring Garrett Plotkin as Reyes being released. Scenes of this trailer were shown as part of the DC Nation block of programming in 2012 on Cartoon Network during the premiere of Green Lantern: The Animated Series. However, no further announcements have been made.
  • Jaime Reyes / Blue Beetle appears in Young Justice, voiced by Eric Lopez, who also voices his scarab.[37][31][32] This version is initially a member of the Team who became attached to the Blue Beetle scarab while passing by Kord Industries after Ted Kord sacrificed himself to stop the Light from obtaining the device. Additionally, Reyes does not experience pain while transforming into the Blue Beetle. Moreover, the Scarab can speak in English, finds lethal courses of action preferable to capture and restraint, and was severed from the Reach's control after landing on Earth centuries prior and being cleansed by ancient Bialyan mystics. After being misled by the Reach's Green Martian thrall, B'arzz O'oomm / Green Beetle, Reyes and the Scarab fall under the Reach's control until the Team use the ancient mystics' magic to free them along with Green Beetle. Reyes would go on to help thwart the Reach's invasion of Earth and, in the third season, join Beast Boy's Outsiders and enter a relationship with Traci Thurston.
  • Jaime Reyes / Blue Beetle appears in Justice League Action, voiced by Jake T. Austin.[31]

Film

Video games

Miscellaneous

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References

External links

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