Downtown Showdown
Written By: Keith Giffen
Art By: Scott Kolins, Romulo Fajardo Jr., Josh Reed
Cover Price: $2.99
Release Date: January 25, 2016
*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*
I have not been a fan of this series and mostly it's due to the constant back and forth quips and bickering that our characters are written as having.......... and because of the complete disregard of the New 52 continuity to this character..... but mostly the dialog. I've seen issues of this where the dialog is so overwhelming that it overshadows the art completely....... and really, it didn't need to be there because we gained nothing from it. Yeah, I'm a negative Nancy when it comes to this book because I really want to love it since I'm a fan of the character and even though I come into each issue with optimistic eyes, I leave wishing that we'd gotten a different book instead of Blue Beetle all together because I just simply don't want another Beetle series to fail. In our previous issue, we saw Jaime being checked out by Teri Magnus and we discovered that the scarab had mutated Jaime's skeletal structure, but because Ted is keeping everything hush-hush, he doesn't tell Jaime. Mostly though, we saw that Ted had a connection to the scarab before Jaime and him ever met. Let's jump into this issue and see where our story goes from there.
Explain It!:
Our issue begins with Blur and another member of the Posse getting fixed up at Dr. Reyes' office........ since you know, Dr. Reyes is secretly working for Ted Kord to patch up all the meta gang members in El Paso and it's during this visit that we see that big ass mofo we saw last issue, who kind of looked like he could be the Green Beetle show up and take Jaime's mother hostage. Yeah, Blur and her banged up friend try to do their best to defend her, but ultimately Blur has to teleport them away when the villain, which we now know is named "Mordecai", goes and kills her friend in a single blow.
Shit gets real when Mordecai follows Blur and Dr. Reyes to a police station and Jaime happens to notice the ruckus and realizes that his mother is in danger. Yeah, it turns out that the only reason Mordecai wanted Dr. Reyes was because he wanted to draw out Blue Beetle...... so much for secret identities..........especially since Jaime's mother keeps yelling out his name during this fight. The fight also draws out Sugar and Spike, who take Ted Kord's mysterious case when they see the damage being done and we also get to see that Teri Magnus is a lot like the version of herself that we saw in Justice League 3000 and 3001 because she too has the Speed Force and uses that power to make sure that Jaime's sister is put into safe keeping during this crisis, while Ted grabs Jaime's father.
In the end, the Posse come to Jaime's aid, when Mordecai overpowers him and attempts to rip the scarab off of his back and we see that all Jaime had to do was focus a little bit because when he finally snaps out of the whammy that Mordecai put on him, he blasts him to holy hell. Yeah, Mordecai was able to take it, but he's summoned back to his master, who we find out is that strange device we saw deep within the ground a couple of issues back that seemed to control The Horde........ Yeah, we've got a shit ton of characters and callbacks out of nowhere here and not a lot of information about any of them, but the takeaway at the end of this issue is that whatever this sentient thing is that drew Jaime to him previously, it's where it is because Dr. Fate imprisoned it there.
That's it for this issue of Blue Beetle and while the characters are being thrown at us left and right, without a lot of explanation about who they are or what they're doing there, I actually found myself enjoying this issue a bit more than I have others in this series because for one thing....... the dialog wasn't awful. Yeah, not a lot was really said here, but it worked for me and I enjoyed the showdown between our hero and the Posse against this mysterious Mordecai. The art was decent and ultimately, I didn't hate reading this....... which is actually something pretty big for me and because of this turn, I actually find that I look forward to the next issue.
Bits and Pieces:
This issue of Blue Beetle certainly isn't the greatest thing that I've ever seen, but the events of this story actually get me interested in where everything is going with this series because to my surprise..... I didn't hate it. The art was decent and the dialog wasn't as bad as it's been....... Plus, we have ourselves a pretty intriguing cliffhanger going on here.
7/10
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