Considering the ongoing superhero fatigue pandemic, the fact that nearly everyone involved in the project was on strike in the days leading up to its release, and most importantly, the relative obscurity of the character, the odds of Jaime Reyes finding an audience in a wide release always felt slim. Somehow, though, as the DC corner of Warner Bros. wraps up its decade-long strategy of throwing everything at the wall, the critical consensus seems to be that Blue Beetle is what stuck.
If nothing else, it’s appropriate that the Blue Beetle became the face of success in the wake of DC’s cinematic womp-womps. Like so many characters from Detective Comics, he’s the result of half a dozen reimaginings and reboots and crises, deaths, and returns from the grave.
Jaime Reyes: The Blue Beetle
The Blue Beetle featured in the 2023 movie of the same name is Jaime Reyes, and he’s a fresh face on the comic book scene. First introduced 17 years ago, he was the brainchild of Red co-creator Cully Hamner, The Librarians writer John Rogers, and genuine superhero royalty Keith Giffen. Reyes shared most of his DNA with the version who made it to the big screen: A Mexican-American kid in a Texas town, fused with a glowy blue alien bug thing, protecting the innocent through the use of powers that he doesn’t fully understand. He’s Green Lantern meets The Greatest American Hero. He’s fun.
This iteration of the character hit newsstands in 2006, and he hit those newsstands hard. Before long the Reyes Blue Beetle was popping up in all sorts of media — Batman: The Brave and the Bold in 2008, Smallville in 2011, and the triple-A NetherRealm superhero fighter Injustice 2 in 2017.
And while contemporary comics, movies, games, and shows have made the modern Blue Beetle a star player, he’s not the first character to go by the name.
Ted Kord — also The Blue Beetle
Before Jaime Reyes became the Blue Beetle in 2006, the title belonged to a guy named Ted Kord — if you saw the movie, you’ll know that his existence was alluded to in the sort of voice cameo that guys in their 30s like to explain to someone on the car ride home from what will later turn out to be their last date.
Kord was a niche character for nerds with specific tastes, thanks in large part to Keith Giffen, the writer who helped create Jaime Reyes years later. First appearing in Charlton Comics’ Captain Atom stories in 1966, he came from the imagination of Steve Ditko, co-creator of Spider-Man. Like Reyes, he had access to the Scarab. Unlike Reyes, he never really got the thing to work right.
Instead, Kord dressed up as his own version of the Blue Beetle, fighting crime with gadgets like super-bright flashlights, Airzookas, and a bug-shaped flying machine. He was the inspiration for Nite Owl from Watchmen, if that helps — everything you saw Nite Owl do was pretty much a bird-themed version of Blue Beetle’s schtick. Well, you know. Everything except that one scene.
Kord was weird. Kord stayed weird. Kord made the jump from Charlton to DC in the ‘80s and quickly found a home as half of a zany duo with the time-traveling ego monster Booster Gold. He was never DC’s most famous hero, and you definitely got the feeling that most of the people he saved were just being polite when they acted like they knew who he was. Even so, he retains a devoted fan base.
Do you know who didn’t retain a devoted fan base? The Blue Beetle before him. That’s right, this isn’t over until I say it’s over.
Dan Garrett — also also The Blue Beetle
Ted Kord begat Jaime Reyes, and Dan Garrett begat Ted Kord.
Dan Garrett’s origins take us all the way back to the 1930s. The character debuted in Mystery Men Comics in August, 1939, and he couldn’t have been more era-appropriate. All the pulpy tropes were there: A cop by day, Garrett received enhanced strength and vitality through the ingestion of vitamin pills. He donned a double-breasted suit and wide-brimmed fedora and fought crime in a way that probably made kids at the time say “Gosh, that sure seems like the writers just aped The Green Hornet.”
Eventually, Garrett would get a re-think, becoming an adventurer and archaeologist, given vague superpowers through the discovery of a mystical scarab found in an Egyptian tomb. The scarab would eventually be passed down to Garrett’s student, Ted Kord.
While it took time to get the perfect Blue Beetle in the comics, we should thank our lucky stars that his on-screen adaptation did not aim for a similar trial-and-error methodology.