After a successful team-up in the six-issue miniseries Blue Beetle: Graduation Day, writer Josh Trujillo, artist Adrian Gutiérrez, colorist Wil Quintana, and letterer Lucas Gattoni reunite for the next chapter of Jaime Reyes’ adventures as the titular character in this week’s BLUE BEETLE #1, which comes in both an English and Spanish edition to celebrate Jaime’s heritage.

TL;DR

Jaime (on the ground) and Ted Kord (directing Jaime from above) are handling an attack from The Madmen when Dynastes and Nitida, two new Beetles characters introduced during Graduation Day, show up to lend support. Together, the group of Beetles save the day but not after causing some considerable collateral damage, including Ted’s bugship. Before he can celebrate, Jaime is called to a diner where members of The Horizon are facing the ire of angry humans who aren’t happy with aliens living among them. Jaime diffuses the situation, but not before The Horizon reveal their frustration with being limited to how much of Earth they can explore and how hostile Earth’s inhabitants can be. The issue ends with Ted being attacked by an unknown entity who blows up the lab and critically injures Ted.

Review

For all the excitement around a new “Dawn of DC” ongoing series for Jaime Reyes’ Blue Beetle, this debut issue felt like it was lacking Jaime’s presence. Trujillo’s script gave a lot of time to multiple characters, without really letting any of them get an adequate introduction or a chance to show development from what we’ve seen in the past. Perhaps the most important new insight we get into any of the characters is a three-panel sequence featuring Roma (Nitida) and Xiomara (Dynastes), where we see Roma expressing a disinterest in being a Beetle and protecting The Horizon.

Structurally, I thought this issue was a bit all over the place. The opening battle never really felt tense, with the two new Beetles randomly showing up and the Madmen never getting much background or putting up a fight. Ted does get to give Jaime a nice pep talk after we see the team has left a path of destruction in their wake and that seems like it’ll be the main thesis for at least the first arc in this series. You can see there is a strong bond between the two and Jaime looks up to Ted as a mentor and friend. The attack on Ted is likely to leave Jaime in a vulnerable state, in both his own mental state and having a more tenured person keeping the Beetles together. Hopefully the development Trujillo gave Jaime in Graduation Day isn’t thrown to the wayside and some of his newfound confidence shows up.

This debut looks great thanks to Gutierrez’s animation-approach to the designs. Characters’ expressions are ever-present, whether their in their Beetle armor or relaxing in swimsuits at the beach. The villain revealed at the end also looks awesom! Really excited to see more of this character in battle. Complementing Gutierrez’s art is Quintana on colors and I love the different tones for each of the Beetle’s uniforms. Ted’s Blue Beetle uniform has a blue palettes that’s distinct from Jaime’s uniform.

Gattoni’s lettering takes some swings and ends up hitting more than missing. With so many characters, it’s not shock that Gattoni would need to incorporate several different text box techniques to keep things separate, but there are a few pages where things feel cluttered. However the text boxes for The Horizon look wonderfully sci-fi.

Final Verdict

After being pleasantly surprised by the Blue Beetle film, I had high hopes for more Jaime Reyes in this new series and was a bit disappointed. It seemed like Trujillo was trying to do too much in this first issue and I hope he’s able to rein things in some as the series progresses as he’s shown he can handle the character with grace in Graduation Day. Jaime Reyes is massively popular right now and another strong comic series could cement him as core player in the “Dawn of DC” phase.

Rating: 6/10