Browncoat wrote:Eep! I see what you mean. I never followed Beetle that much, but doesn't he look pretty damn different than the original?
Jaime Reyes' Blue Beetle looks absolutely nothing like Dan or Ted. His powers are completely different than Dan's and even drastically different than the Black Beetle's. The Black Beetle is a new villain that was created during the Reyes Blue Beetle series, no one knows who he is for sure. He just hates Jaime and has an obsession with the different colored scarabs. Oh yeah, there are now multiple colored scarabs. So far we know that there is Red, Blue and Black scarabs (Black Beetle has the red and black). It has been mentioned that there are other scarabs on earth, but not what colors they are or if they are mystical or technological. The Blue Beetle scarab that use to be mystical has been retconned so that now it is some kind of sentient, symbiotic piece of technology created by some aliens called the Reach. They employ these Beetle warriors, of which there are many, to conquer worlds.
Dan Garrett- Archaeologist, the first version of Blue Beetle as far as DC continuity is concerned
Powers: Flight, Strength and could fire blast from his hand.
Ted Kord- the second version of Blue Beetle as far as DC continuity is concerned
Powers: none. He was a genius and inventor, due to being a scientist he was also pretty good at investigation, knowledgeable in hand to hand combat (trained with Black Canary and Nightwing) , and capable acrobat
Jaime Reyes- the 3rd Blue Beetle as far as DC continuity is concerned
Powers: Flight, super strength, energy manipulation, suit can morp/transform, he can pretty much do dang near anything
Here are all three Blue Beetle's together. The one in this image is supposed to be the Dan Garrett owned by DC in the suit, but the colors are wrong. You notice that in this pic the original Beetle's suit (Dan) is blue and yellow(introduced by Fox Comics in 1939) instead of blue and red (which was introduced by Charlton Comics in the 60's). That blue and yellow suit is actually the one worn by the actual Golden Age Blue Beetle Dan Garret. Notice the difference in how the last name was spelled. Also the DC owned version is an archaeologist, the original Fox version is the son of a cop, who if I remember right became a cop. I definitely know that he was a cop in the old Blue Beetle radio shows.
Fox sold the character to Charlton in the 50's and when they revised him in the 60's they changed his name, it is the revised version, not the Golden Age version that DC bought from Charlton. The GA character is in the public domain, but you would risk a lawsuit if you tried to use him under the Blue Beetle name. He made a brief appearance a flashback along with his sidekick Sparky in the Project Superpowers series. While Sparky, who DC does not own, did actually appear at least once in Project Superpowers, the original Blue Beetle was killed or never returned from the urn. (if you read Project Superpowers that will make sense) The current version of the GA Blue Beetle in Proj: Superpowers series is called the Scarab.
Dan Garret: Golden Age Blue Beetle
Golden Age Blue Beetle Powers: Bulletproof suit, used vitamin 2-X to gain superstrength
This is the actual first Blue Beetle costume introduced. This is still Dan Garret, but he did not have bulletproof costume of vitamin 2-X at this time. He was mixture of the Shadow and Green Hornet who used gadgets. I believe he only made 1 or two appearances in Mystery Men Comics before he was changed to the Dan Garret in the blue and yellow costume. I would imagine that this version of Blue Beetle is in public domain as well.
It is because of the costume and power change from his first appearance and the revamping of the character from the Green Hornet like version to the Blue and Yellow costume that I say there are 5 versions of the character. The first two are public domain and the last 3 are owned by DC.
The Black Beetle: This is the character introduced in the Jaime Reyes Blue Beetle series.
Powers: His powers seem to be more in line with those of Dan Garret (strength, flight, energy blast) and he seems to lack the shape changing abilities of Jaime. The Black Beetle also has the ability to time travel and is now in possession of both a black and red scarab. He has made several appearances around the DCU looking for other scarabs whose colors have not been revealed.
The Scarab from Project Super Powers:
[img][img]http://images.tfaw.com/covers_tfaw/200/ma/may083742e.jpg[/img]
http://media.comicvine.com/uploads/0/57 ... _super.jpg[/img]
Don't know much about this character, but he seems to be both a good and bad guy. I've only read the first Proj: Superpowers series and not much was revealed about him in that. He played a bigger part in series 2, which I have not read.
