Blue Beetle #20 Review

BLUE BEETLE #20
Written by John Rogers
Art and cover by Rafael Albuquerque

I had a nice, fully typed review all finished and was just proof reading it as Firefox decided to crash on me and wipe the entire review on me. Le sigh. Let me try this again.

As I've stated many times before, I love Blue Beetle. It's one of my favourite books. Sinestro Corps War is the best event in recent memory and the best thing going in comics right now. Seems like combining the two would be a no brainer, right? Well, not everything goes together like chocolate and peanut butter.

The opening premise of this issue is stellar. The death of a Sinestro Corps member prompts his ring to search out a new host. It is revealed here that the Blue Beetle scarabs are living hiveminds from Sector 2. As the ring is looking for hosts from Sector 2, it heads to El Paso looking for Jaime and his scarab. Sensing a more fitting member, it detours above Jaime's house and heads after Peacemaker, who The Reach implanted with a scarab several months back. At this point in time, The Reach allow the ring to take command of Peacemaker and, in turn, activate their scarab, effectively taking over Peacemaker's mind and body, turning him into a hulking, twisted version of Jaime's Blue Beetle appearance.

After this excellent setup, the rest of the issue devolves into a rather generic fight which saw Jaime team up with a random Green Lantern to stop the out of control Peacemaker. In the end, a rather contrived and rushed conclusion was used in which Jaime used his scarab to hack into Peacemaker's and free him of its control, in turn forcing the Sinestro ring to seek out a new host. After this, Peacemaker uses one of the broken off Beetle claws to severe the scarab from his spine, effectively killing himself, in order to prevent himself from becoming a monster and being used by The Reach as a weapon against his friends.

I've compared Jaime to Peter Parker and his earlier days as Spider-Man on several occasions and this twisted version of Peacemaker gave off a real Venom-like vibe throughout this issue. It's a shame to see the potential of this setup wasted like it was in this issue and, while it was a very well done death, it's still felt like an unneeded and rushed killing.

In the end, this issue just lacked the magic of most every other Blue Beetle issue before it. I would have liked to see a follow up on Brenda from last issue and was saddened to see her not even mentioned here. The entire issue almost felt like something editorially mandated to help boost sales and, while Rogers does a good job integrating it into his story, it just feels like he was thrown off his game and he was forced to tack on the Sinestro stuff.

Verdict - Check It. It's still a good book and worth a read. It just doesn't feel like a normal Blue Beetle issue and I was hoping for a little more out of this tie-in. Things should get back to normal next month and I'm looking forward to seeing what comes out of the death of Peacemaker.

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