“Yesterday’s” Comic> The Blue Beetle #20 (Charlton’s short run)

This was the wrong time for Dan to remember he didn’t attach the bungie cords.

The Blue Beetle #20

Charlton Comics (June, 1955)

Okay, let me see if I can explain this. For whatever reason (I’m guessing the usual publication and mailing games of the time) Charlton’s Blue Beetle run starts on #18, which may be a rebrand of whatever #17 was, and will do the same thing with issue #21 to #22, as the title goes to someone else. That’s annoying enough, but #18 and #19 are reprints of stories I’ve covered before. #20 has two original stories, or at least ones unprinted that I haven’t covered from Blue Beetle stories in other Fox or Holyoke anthology titles, with only one reprint. So I’ll do this issue and #21, which has the same thing.

[Read along with me here]

“Rookie Trouble”

One of the original stories. Dan thinks he’s taking down a gunman on the street, but it turns out to be a foreign agent, who plants microfilm on Joan. So at what point does the Blue Beetle work with the US intelligence agent? The microfilm was a fake and he was in on it, but at what point? Did Dan actually screw up or…yeah, at least in the first read I’m not following the plan very well. Good thing Blue Beetle did, I guess.

Joan Mason: Reporter> “The Walking Atomic Bomb”

Originally a story from Blue Beetle #48, during the Fox period. To my benefit this was one of the issues Comic Book Plus is missing, so it’s a new story to me. Joan thinks she’s hitting a streak of bad luck, but it ends up being good luck when she gets to do a news story on an atomic bomb expert and helps save him from baddies wanting to steal the plan for his “disintegrator”. Joan’s back to being on the Daily Planet and she’s a brunette while in the original stories she’s a redhead. A rather good Joan Mason solo adventure, and she didn’t need one of the cop characters to save the day. This was an adventure where she takes center stage all the way through because she doesn’t need muscle on this one, just her brains.

“Last Chance”

Back to original Blue Beetle adventures. Apparently our hero can fly into space and not need a space suit or air supply. Okay. Remember, we don’t have the magic/alien tech scarab version yet. This is still the guy who is supposed to have chainmail armor and a vitamin 2X strength boost, yet in this comic he flies, still has X-Ray vision, and is strong enough to pull a space station out of orbit to stop the “enemy power” from conquering space. It’s a good story but it looks like the classic version is already gone for good. At least he stopped the crook from getting away and saving Dan’s rookie reputation. Also, Blue Beetle still works with Central Intelligence though Dan is back to being a rookie cop for who knows how many years.

overall

Well, goodbye forever, Dr Franz. Charlton seems to be going with the later comics rather than the earlier ones, even when Fox’s last set was starting to return to the classic version of Dan. I liked that version. So now we have all the extra powers he somehow picked up, Joan’s a redhead now, Mike is still Irish and chastising the rookie. The stories are good but I miss the original take on the Blue Beetle. We have one more issue before Charlton starts a full series starting with #1, and I’m expecting more of this. We’ll find out next time.