The azure avenger
Nov. 1st, 2013 04:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tilly_stratfordSo I finished the short-lived Blue Beetle comic series from the eighties. It wasn't a total loss, but it wasn't a particularly well-crafted comic either.
Overly pompous Kirby-esque dialogue and text boxes (an odd choice for an eighties title), before Justice League International happened and the writer tried and failed to capture that anarchic comedy vibe; The author's conservative views shining through more and more; Way too many subplots; Ill-proportioned art (they actually switched artists halfway through; I kept complaining about the first one until I realized the replacement was even worse); Dull, unsympathetic supporting cast, and so on.
Now, my introduction to Ted Kord was through JLI, which I always assumed took pointers on Beetle's background from the contemporary solo series -- not the case. Like in JLI, we learn that Ted ran the family company (KORD Industries) into the ground and had to file for bankruptcy. In the solo series, he took his father's small company, made it big, and then his estranged father returned and hijacked the company back. Other things too, like Ted's fiancée Mel never rated a mention outside the solo series.
There were things I enjoyed about the series too, though. I'm pretty sure it started the whole "Ted is a really eccentric dresser" thing (the artist referred to the style as "Gene Kelly punk") -- this is the first comic book I've read where the letter column pages were full of people discussing a character's casualwear; I finally learned why the action figure has a small beetle decal on its arm (it's a button to summon The Bug); And it gave me a new appreciation for Batman: The Brave and the Bold (the Beetle episodes references a whole bunch of things from the solo series).
I think my favourite thing was that this series remembered that Ted is an Olympic-level gymnast (a detail seemingly forgotten in all other comics he feature in), and so each battle has Ted somersaulting, turning in the air, generally using his flexibility to get the upper hand.
So all in all not a total waste of my time.
Overly pompous Kirby-esque dialogue and text boxes (an odd choice for an eighties title), before Justice League International happened and the writer tried and failed to capture that anarchic comedy vibe; The author's conservative views shining through more and more; Way too many subplots; Ill-proportioned art (they actually switched artists halfway through; I kept complaining about the first one until I realized the replacement was even worse); Dull, unsympathetic supporting cast, and so on.
Now, my introduction to Ted Kord was through JLI, which I always assumed took pointers on Beetle's background from the contemporary solo series -- not the case. Like in JLI, we learn that Ted ran the family company (KORD Industries) into the ground and had to file for bankruptcy. In the solo series, he took his father's small company, made it big, and then his estranged father returned and hijacked the company back. Other things too, like Ted's fiancée Mel never rated a mention outside the solo series.
There were things I enjoyed about the series too, though. I'm pretty sure it started the whole "Ted is a really eccentric dresser" thing (the artist referred to the style as "Gene Kelly punk") -- this is the first comic book I've read where the letter column pages were full of people discussing a character's casualwear; I finally learned why the action figure has a small beetle decal on its arm (it's a button to summon The Bug); And it gave me a new appreciation for Batman: The Brave and the Bold (the Beetle episodes references a whole bunch of things from the solo series).
I think my favourite thing was that this series remembered that Ted is an Olympic-level gymnast (a detail seemingly forgotten in all other comics he feature in), and so each battle has Ted somersaulting, turning in the air, generally using his flexibility to get the upper hand.
So all in all not a total waste of my time.
