Close Encounters
Written By: Christopher Sebela
Art By: Scott Kolins, Romulo Fajardo Jr., Josh Reed
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: October 25, 2017
*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*
Okay, we have ourselves a new writer on this book and that means we can hopefully get back to some proper Blue Beetle style stories and leave the JL3001 in the past........ or the future...... Really, you can leave it wherever you like just as long as we leave it. Seriously though, I really hope that Chris Sebela can pull together some really kick ass Beetle stories because I was really looking forward to this series when it was announced, but after reading what we've gotten so far, I just kind of want a do over because I don't feel that this series ever became what it should have been........... mostly, just fun is what I'm talking about. Hopefully, that changes now. Let's check it out.
Explain It!:
Our issue begins with our hero thinking about the future and really, it stays that way up until an alien invader goes and gives Jaime a close encounter by the end. The planning ahead for the future first gets brought up by Jaime's now steady girlfriend Naomi, who now that the summer's about to be over and Jaime and her are about to become seniors in high school wants them to start thinking about where their lives will end up and what they plan on doing after their final year of school is over........ sounds a bit crazy to me, especially since these two have only really been dating for what seems like a summer, but Jaime apparently is really into Naomi and he doesn't freak out the way I would have at this line of questioning.
Coincidentally, the next day when Jaime is training with Ted Kord, the former Blue Beetle offers our young hero a job and gives him a special bonus to sweeten the pot, but still at this point, Jaime isn't sure about what he wants to do and if he wants to forgo college completely to just join up with Ted's crazy company. So yeah, Jaime has a lot on his mind, but now that he has a pocket full of cash and a week until school starts, his mind is only going to focus on fun and right now, fun means a road trip.
In the end, Paco gets a car for the trip and we see that over the summer, where Jaime hasn't really seen a lot of Paco or Brenda that these bickering fools have actually gone and fallen for each other, but aren't about to let Jaime or Naomi know about it and while we have this awkwardness and Naomi passively giving Jaime shit about possibly taking a job from Ted Kord, our gang find themselves in Roswell, where wouldn't you know it, an alien ship makes itself known. As our issue closes, Jaime slips away from his friends so that he can Beetle up, but once the invaders exit their ship, it seems that Jaime has lost all of his confidence in taking them down.
That's it for this issue of Blue Beetle and while it was fun catching up with Jaime after him having a pretty restful summer, there wasn't really any progression with the character besides for him not being able to understand the scarab out of nowhere and while I like low key stories like this one normally, the characters just came off unlikable, where Naomi just seemed like a nag and even though Paco and Brenda seem like they're secretly together now, they just continued with their annoying bickering. So yeah, not the best first issue for a new writer, but I still look forward with what Sebela plans on doing with the characters. The art, while it continues to be Scott Kolins on pencils just didn't do it for me this issue because I found a lot of the action scenes to be way too busy to the point where I couldn't understand what the hell was going on.
Bits and Pieces:
While I looked forward to what Chris Sebela would bring to the party as the new writer on this book, I found that he didn't do enough with the characters to really make them exciting and the one big thing he changed, he didn't explain....... which was annoying. The art as well was annoying because by the time we got to our big action scene, the art was a little too busy to fully comprehend what are hero was doing.
5.5/10
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