The DC Finest volume Blue Beetle - Blue Beetle Challenges The Red Knight gathers together not only the Steve Ditko Blue Beetle stories, but for the first time by DC presents the vintage Dan Garrett magical Beetle adventures by Joe Gill, Tony Tallarico and Bill Fraccio. Charlton picked up the Blue Beetle a decade earlier, but it was the superhero boom of the 60's which enticed them to finally launch a revised version. The Blue Beetle in these earliest stories is a vastly powerful figure, a mystical equivalent to the radioactively powered Captain Atom. When the first Blue Beetle fell away, it would take Steve Ditko to revive the character yet again, giving us a scientist named Ted Kord who use his technical skills to empower his crimefighting efforts. Ditko was fresh from his Spider-Man tenure and this Blue Beetle moved not unlike his arachnid predecessor. Oddly missing from this collection is the final unpublished Blue Beetle tale by Ditko, but in its place we get the debut issue of the second Charlton Bullseye which published a fanboy team-up between Beetle and The Question. It's an odd choice, but I'm glad it's here for a wider audience.
Here are the covers of the issues in this volume.
The Dojo will be taking a closer look at most all of these issues as the month tumbles along.
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I want to read these just to see Praying Mantis Man in action. That character looks a bit like the DC villain Hellgrammite. I have a couple of the Ditko BB comics noted above (# 3 and 4) and they really are nicely illustrated .
ReplyDeletePraying Mantis Man is my favorite BB baddie. He's the only one who gets two shots at our hero.
DeleteI like Praying Mantis Man, too. Very unusual. We used to have the real things in our yard when I was growing up. Fascinating creatures. As I was looking through some of the issues you list above, I noticed the first letters page in v2 n3 with one sent in by a certain George R.R. Martin of Bayonne, NJ.
ReplyDeleteI wonder whatever happened to that guy? The praying mantis is a fascinating critter. I've seen a few in the wild as a kid. Not much anymore, but I don't go where they might yet be.
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