Blue Beetle #6

[superfangirl1]

Adding to espanolbot post.

http://scans-daily.dreamwidth.org/3628023.html?#cutid1

Comments

[quatoria]

Yes, this parade of misery and suffering is absolutely what I want when I pick up a copy of the Blue Beetle. They fully and totally figured out the desires of their target market, here. I sure hope things get worse next month!

[hybrid2]

Need more rape.




(I fell sick just joking about it...)

[littlepunkryo]

So these people just don't understand at all what made the first BB so great and charming, do they? This was the last issue for me - Jaime slapping Brenda was the last straw. I tried.

[auggie18]

Thunderous amounts of motto. Who'd want to go and read something FUN anyway?

[gtrout]

"Charming" was never in their directive, I think.

Bah.

[darkknightjrk]

You know what the funny thing is? Initially, I wasn't really interested in the new series, because from what I was seeing it looked like a retread of the old series.

Looking at it now, I think it is possible to make this a good story--the idea of this teenager trying to stop this killing machine living inside him--but what I'm seeing in the scans just isn't being presented as that interesting.

[majingojira]

God I hate it when I'm right. Damned understanding of the narrative flow off things.

They've now completely jettisoned everything from the original series. Style, tone, pacing, linearity (who else didn't appreciate yet another DC book trying to advertise another DC book?) and now supporting cast and location.

I saw it coming. I really did . . .

[majingojira]

I liked that story better when it was called "Guyver".

[icon_uk]

Jaime's Blue Beetle has always been a Guyver story.

[icon_uk]

Agreed, if you weren't aiming for the fun side of it, this would be a perfectly decent "Powers he neither wants nor can contorl properly" scenario, but that's been done before, and it was the overall ensemble which sold the concept last time.

[majingojira]

Oh, I know, but now the tone and style largely match (or are even more screwed up).

Also, I wanted an excuse to use my Guyver icon :)

[practicalcat]

You know, when I saw that Jaime was getting a book in the reboot, I felt kind of bad. I wanted to support Jaime getting a book because I loved the old series with it's snarky sense of humor and awesome support cast.

Now? I feel not a whit of guilt about not spending money on this derivative junk. Blah blah blah, best friend goes evil, blee blah bloo, no one knows his seeeeeeecret, natter natter natter. BLEH.

[q99]

It may possibly be a good story, but it's not really a Blue Beetle story.

[darkknightjrk]

I wouldn't even say that--there was definitely a component of the original comic, it just wasn't as explicitly the main plot point as it is now.

[espanolbot]

Too late, you've jinxed the rest of the series!

[leikomgwtfbbq]

Well, I don't know about you folks, but I'm sure glad they stripped out every single thing that made the Jaime Blue Beetle series appealing and lovable. All the fun, humor, poignancy, adventure, and general awesomeness had to go, because this is far more ~*unique*~ and ~*edgy*~. It's not like we ever have other pointlessly samey dark-n-edgy comics clogging up our shelves at the local comic store.

Ugh, I'm glad I never bothered with this reboot version.

[espanolbot]

As I said to Linkara, who said on Twitter that he abandoned the series with the previous issue, that watching this reboot disintegrate is actually kind of fascinating.

I mean, they took a a chance with the previous incarnation and allowed it to complete its run despite its low sales, and it came out one of their more critically acclaimed books with generally a lot of good feeling aimed towards it. And after that they took a chance and managed to get Jaime into their new Batman show, so a similar good fan reaction.

They're even having a live-action Blue Beetle show, which has been advertised as part of the DC Nation programming block along with the likes of Young Justice, Super Best Friends Forever (Lauren Faust's Donna Troy, Barbara Gordon, Kara Zor El show) etc.

And someone in DC thought that, with the new fans coming in from Batman: the Brave and the Bold and potentially from the new TV show, that THIS was the way that they should be introduced to the character in the comics!

This isn't the same as someone who watched Teen Titans as a kid getting squicked out by the differences between Starfire in the show and Starfire in Red Hood and the Outlaws, they had like a ten year buffer between the show and the comic. The change in tone between the new Blue Beetle comic and the old versions happened so suddenly I'm suprised we didn't get whiplash!

[quatoria]

I know! When I read the old Blue Beetle, I kept thinking - this is great, but it'd be so much better if every single piece of the comic was torn out and replaced with something darker and miserable and much less fun in every way. Whooo!

[liara_shadowsong]

Okay, I want to support Jaime having his own series. Really. I like Jaime. But this... is not what I want to read. If they put the fun back, I'll probably buy it from that point onward (entirely skipping over the earlier issues). But for now, I just can't bring myself to ask for it as my LCS. I don't think I like this reboot very much, in general (I'm only getting two titles right now, and starting to seriously consider dropping them). But I am glad to see Paco is no longer mind-controlled!

[fleur_de_liz]

THIS IS THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT I WANTED.

This version of Blue Beetle is like a McNugget: they took the comic book equivalent of beaks and feet, boiled them down, pressed them into a Blue Beetle shaped treat, and tried coloring it up to make it look pretty.

[leikomgwtfbbq]

Yeah, we totally just really needed it to be exactly the same pointlessly dreary and miserable atmosphere as a thousand other poorly-written messes on the shelves.

Whew, am I glad we got rid of something original, upbeat, cheerful, and fun! We don't need that in our SERIOUS MATURE ART FORM!

Bleh. I miss the real Jaime and Co. so bad.

[jlbarnett]

I'm still buying this because I'm hoping Bedard will get fired and a new author on it rather than it getting cancelled, but I'm to the point I barely read any of it. I just flip through the pictures.

You know CSN actually said this book was cancelled with issue 8 according to last weeks. I checked with my comic shop though, it hadn't been added to the cancelled six.

but overall this is just terrible. Maybe when he gets back from New York though Paco will have been inspired to go back to school, Brenda will have learned self defense, the Reyes family will be ready to support Jaime. And then his first arc back can be getting rid of the homicidal power mad spirit possessing La Dama reverting her back into a power broker type.

[pyrotwilight]

*shrug* It IS a departure but I can see why DC's trying to do it. They want to grab a big readership for the book as soon as possible and his prior cancellation showed while awesome and critically acclaimed it just didn't sell enough. Not that it really excuses it but I get it. I'm hoping it does well and actually gets some of its old tone once it gets on good legs.

[jlbarnett]

if it gets good legs why would it switch to it's old tone?

[pyrotwilight]

Well, it's not quite a pace I think the series can pull off long term with his character (the current pace) since it feels so far like an extra large setup arc.

[tsunamiwombat]

Guyver at least has the Catharsis of said teenager getting really pissed off and ripping the limbs off monsters.

[eyz]

Guys..why didn't you simply bring back Black Beetle instead of turning Paco into.....THIS!!

I'm still wishing a dimensional warp-thingie will open up in the sky, Black Beetle fighting the real Booster Gold will come out of that. The whole reboot/Flashpoint/New 52 was in fact his doing, not Zoom or Flash's. He snaps Paco's red & grey beetle off and things will go back to normal after that.

[shadowpsykie]

i don;t liike this... i don't HATE it... but i don't like this.... *well i hate the slap... im sure he could have done something else to "threaten her" and shock Paco back without actually physically striking her....

however, i can't abandon this series... i loved it before and i am holding on for dear life that SOME of the old magic will come back... hoping for some of Jaime to rub off on Kaji-Dah or something.... i just... i can't let go...

[shadowpsykie]

motto.

again i have no problem with the scarrab havinig more initial control and Jaime having a harder time controlling it... some of what was done... bothers me... but regardless... i am holding on to hope that after this set up (and yeah i agree this is an extra long setup arch) we will see a slower more character driven story take place... cuz really... we ahve yet to see Blue Beetle the "Hero"

[gerardotejada]

They destroyed a series with a great future, well at least Batwoman was saved.

[majingojira]

Honestly, of the minor characters I checked up on, we have yet to see a quite a few the New 52 be Heroes yet.

Superboy, to me, stands out secondmost to Blue Beetle.

[majingojira]

It's a hope in vain.

The mood and tone for the series has already been established, and short of a new writer, that's not likely to change.

A film Student's tip: If you don't like a movie after the first 10 to 20 minutes, you're free to leave at your leisure. You're unlikely to like what's to come.