Category: Blue Beetle

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Teen Titans: Titans of Tomorrow


By Sean McKeever, Geoff Johns, George Pérez & others (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-84576-899-7

This slim volume of frantic Fights ‘n’ Tights teen angst follows on from an earlier saga when the constantly changing team of junior heroes arrived a decade into their own future and were aghast to find that their adult selves had conquered America in the name of peace and security. Forearmed with the knowledge of this dystopian tomorrow the kids came back to now (see Teen Titans: The Future is Now) and resolved to counter those events…

Superhero lives are fairly chaotic and in the interim a number of Crises occurred which seemed to guarantee that Tomorrow would never come true. This volume, collecting issues #50-54, opens with a memorial for Superboy and Kid Flash (both recently deceased) as Robin, Wonder Girl, Ravager, Kid Devil, Miss Martian and Supergirl share their grief and memories with previous members.

‘Passage’ (team written by Sean McKeever, Geoff Johns, Marv Wolfman & Todd Dezago and illustrated by Randy Green, Mike McKone, George Pérez, Todd Nauck, Andy Lanning, Sandra Hope, Marlo Alquiza & Larry Stucker) finds the survivors reminiscing in ‘Friday Night Lights’ and ‘Dear Barry…’ whilst including a neat, entertaining digression that provides the other side of a team-up with the new Blue Beetle against Biker-Berserker Lobo (the main part of that saga is collected in the superb Blue Beetle: Reach For the Stars).

Meanwhile a mysterious gang are systematically defeating the Justice League and replacing them…

The four-part epic ‘The Titans of Tomorrow… Today!’ begins with ‘Futures of the Past’ (McKeever, Alé Garza, Derek Fridolfs, Rob Hunter & Marlo Alquiza) as the future Titans – including versions of the dead Superboy and Kid Flash – arrive in contemporary times to ensure their own existence by forcing their younger selves to comply with their draconian counterparts continually re-editing memories.

Simple, no? Perhaps not, as wild card Blue Beetle has inexplicably re-entered the mix…

Selecting a key moment when the alien invader Starro nearly conquered Earth, the future Titans substitute themselves for the JLA and attempt to seduce, demoralise and even thrash their teen incarnations into becoming the fascist monsters they are, but youth is always rebellious and plans go very wrong indeed in ‘Beat Yourself Up’ (art by Jamal Igle, Alquiza, Jesse Delperdang & Hunter) as Robin finds a uniquely dramatic way to stymie his tomorrow tormentor and Blue Beetle leads a counterattack…

The temporally fluid situation shifts again as the future Luthor materializes with a battalion of tomorrow’s corrupted superheroes in ‘Combine and Conquer’ (illustrated by Eddy Barrows & Rob Hunter) to finish the battle and save his own timeline, but his Titan’s Army has overlooked the mind-controlling power of Starro who (which?) simply takes them all over.

The action spectacularly concludes in ‘Fight the Future’ (Barrows, Joe Prado, Greg Tocchini, Hunter, Julio Ferreira & Oclair Albert) as allegiances shift and the future dies forever in an explosive battle and simple resignation…

Fast, furious, this extremely twisty-turny, time-travel extravaganza is better than most of its ilk, and on the whole this is a genuinely fun-filled action romp; but once again I can only remark that for the less well-informed reader or DC newcomer, the bits without hitting and explosions might be very confusing. As always, the choice is yours. The future is not immutable…

© 2007, 2008 DC Comics. All rights reserved.

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Blue Beetle: Reach for the Stars


John Rogers, Rafael Albuquerque & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-1642-9

Although long-gone as a monthly series the latest incarnation of the venerable Blue Beetle still survives in trade paperback collections where you can – and should – experience the frantic, fun and thrill-packed exploits of young Jaime Reyes, an El Paso teenager who was catapulted into the world of high-level super-heroics when a sentient scarab jewel affixed itself to his spine and transformed him into an armoured bio-weapon.

The third volume (collecting issues #13-19 of the monthly comic-book) begins with ‘Defective’ by Rogers, Albuquerque, David Baldeon and Dan Davis, wherein a benevolent seeming alien from an interstellar collective named The Reach introduces himself and reveals that the scarab is a invitation used to prepare endangered worlds like Earth for trade and commerce as part of a greater pan-galactic civilisation.

Unfortunately the one attached to Jaime has been damaged over the centuries it was here and isn’t working properly.

But the Reach envoy is a big, fat liar…

The Scarab should have paved the way for a full invasion and once they discover this, Jaime and militaristic superhero Peacemaker soon realise that The Reach are the worst kind of alien invaders; patient, subtle, deceptive and stocked with plenty of space-tech to sell to Earth’s greedy governments. The only hope of defeating the marauders is to expose their real scheme to the public – which is too dazzled by the intergalactic newcomers’ media blitz to listen…

‘Mister Nice Guy’ (Rogers & Albuquerque) finds the Beetle teamed again with the erratic Guy Gardner – a Green Lantern who knows all about The Reach and their Trojan Agenda – to defeat the macabre Ultra-Humanite who has sold his telepathic services to the invaders. Still looking for allies and a solution Jaime meets Superman in ‘Someone to Watch Over Me’ by J. Torres & Freddie Williams Jr. and battles one of the DC Universe’s gravest menaces in the startlingly powerful change of pace tale ‘Total Eclipso: the Heart’ by Rogers & Albuquerque.

The same creative team produced ‘Something in the Water’ as the elemental menace Typhoon joins with The Reach to endanger an entire city – and Bruce Wayne’s off-shore oil wells – in a clever and insightful tale with plenty of punch whilst ‘Away Game’ (Rogers, Albuquerque, Baldeon & Davis) finds the Beetle and the Teen Titans in pitched and pithy battle against the unbeatable alien biker-punk Lobo.

Rogers and Albuquerque are joined by the weirdly whimsical Keith Giffen for the final tale in this collection which focuses on Jaime’s best friend Brenda, who has blithely lived her entire life unaware that her foster-mother is La Dama, El Paso’s crime boss supreme. The distraught girl only learns the dreadful ‘Hard Truths’ when the rival mob Intergang declares war and sends the fifty foot woman Giganta to smash her and her family to gooey pulp…

There are so few series that combine action and adventure with fun and wit, and can even evoke tragedy and poignant loss on command. John Rogers excels in this innovative and impossibly readable saga and the art is always top notch. And with the climactic final battle against the Reach still to come, this is a series any adventure fan will want to read over and over again.

© 2007, 2008 DC Comics.  All Rights Reserved.