Blue Beetle # 9
DC COMICS
WRITER: Keith Giffen, John Rogers
ARTIST/COVER: Duncan Rouleau

The new Blue Beetle returns to his hometown of El Paso to find that he has become an even bigger celebrity than before. Oh yeah, Peacemaker is alive again too. That is pretty much the story here. The Beetle's new alter-ego, Jaime Reyes and his friends do some research into the background of the scarab and its previous owners and Peacemaker reveals to them the Scarab's possible alien links-- apparently to the New Gods. Other than that, this is a pretty humdrum issue, filled with typical Giffen banter. The creators of this book act as if this is a major title populated with beloved comic book icons and not a marginal book that is fighting to get people's interest. They present a story where almost nothing happens and expect the readers to get excited about characters they don't care about. The art has a nice, cartoonish look that makes it stand out from the rest of the books on the shelves but it isn't good enough to be a draw in itself. Apparently DC is building up to some giant New Gods-related, company-wide, crossover focusing on struggling titles like Firestorm and Blue Beetle. Well they better pick up the pace quickly because more issues like this one will cause the book to lose the few readers it still has.

Blue Beetle # 2