Blue Beetle #12 Review and *SPOILERS*

Mr. Wayne Goes To El Paso

Written By: Keith Giffen, J.M. DeMatteis

Art By: Scott Kolins, Romulo Fajardo Jr., Josh Reed

Cover Price: $3.99

Release Date: August 23, 2017

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

Now that we've got a new status quo for Jaime Reyes, what with his armor talking to him like in the good old days of the character and this kind of making Ted Kord's character redundant, I'm really hoping that this series really starts finding its footing because while I love Blue Beetle, this series really hasn't been for me.  I don't know how much we're going to get from this creative team though because they only have one more issue after this left and they might just want to tie a few threads they left dangling together before their departure.  It's all up in the air though so let's dive into this issue and see what Jaime's up to and see what the future holds for him now that Batman has come to town to see what the young hero can do.  Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

Our issue begins with Batman going to Ted Kord to give him hell for letting such a young hero go out on his own without the proper training and after a few verbal jabs back and forth, this scene really just comes down to us finding out that Batman has met Ted Kord as the Blue Beetle before, Ted is obsessed with joining the Justice League and letting Batman know that Jaime is more than just some kid with the armor he's packing.  So with that info out and about, Batman decides to stay in town so that he can see what Jaime can do and see if he poses a threat to the populace.  

It seems that Batman won't have to wait too long to Jaime's dismay because while our hero has a date he desperately wants to with Naomi, he's interrupted by the villain Ghostfire, who wants to make a big name for himself by killing the hero of El Paso and while Batman is initially impressed a bit with Jaime for taking the fight away from people............. ultimately, Jaime fails in taking Ghostfire down and Batman has to step in and save some kids who got in the way of the fight and put Ghostfire down himself.  

In the end, even with Jaime's failure, Batman seems impressed with him because of the compassion that he has for the man inside the Ghostfire suit, who we find out has terminal cancer.  It really feels like it boils down to the type of message that Batman wants for his Justice League of America team and while the Dark Knight doesn't exactly spell this out, that's the way it seemed to me.  As our issue closes, Jaime is trying to calm Naomi down for him missing their date, but he's interrupted by Teri Magnus, who wants to use the scarab as a power source for her Cosmic Treadmill so that her and Tina can finally go home to the year 3001............ Yeah, Giffen and DeMatteis are going to use their last issue to tie up their Justice League 3001 run.

That's it for this issue of Blue Beetle and while I thought that Jaime finally talking to the scarab was going to put this series on the correction course that it needed, I found the way that they talked to one another utterly boring because there was no conflict to be had and the scarab didn't seem to be very good at analyzing the fight between Jaime and Ghostfire.  All in all, Jaime was still pretty damn ineffective even with the armor helping him and that was disappointing as hell.  Also disappointing was the voice that was given to Batman in this issue because he didn't come off sounding like any Batman that I've read.  The art in this issue is as decent as it always is, but the story and characters still seem to be suffering to me.  

Bits and Pieces:

Even though we have a new dynamic going on between Jaime and the scarab and Batman's in town, this issue still came off boring as hell and the characters just felt off.  The art remains as good as it's always been, but it can only propel this series so far and because everything else feels underwhelming, this remains a series that I want to love, but just can't.

5.5/10