“Yesterday’s” Comic> Blue Beetle #21 (Charlton short run)

Dan, that’s not how you play “Battleship”.

The Blue Beetle #21

Charlton Comics (August, 1955)

Well, we’ve reached the end of this incarnation of the Blue Beetle, four runs under three different publishers. The numbering on this short run took over from The Thing!, not to be confused with the Marvel Comics hero, and from here would be taken over by Mr. Muscles. I don’t know why the first two issues were all reprints, hence why I didn’t cover them, the previous issue had one reprint and three new stories, and this one has another “Joan Mason: Reporter” reprint, a reprinted text story, and two new Blue Beetle adventures, and ends the series here. Instead we’ll have a re-imagine of the whole thing next week, but one more for the road with Dan, Mike, and Joan, shall we?

[Read along with me here]

“The Unmasking”

Hey, Theo, you want to see petty? Check out how Mike in this run treats Dan. This story starts with Mike congratulating him for not screwing up. This version of Mike should meet Beetle Girl sometime. Actually, replace this Mike with the less jerk Mike we’ve seen before. Anyway, the story: Somehow a crook figures out Dan is the Blue Beetle thanks to a stage plane accident and comes up with a plan to frame Dan and put him in jail. This way, and here’s where it falls apart, when the Blue Beetle comes to prove Dan’s innocence, it will prove Dan is the Blue Beetle and not that the Blue Beetle wants to help a cop he knows was wrongly accused. The idea of a criminal wanting to unmask the Blue Beetle isn’t bad, and if it was explained (it’s not) I could even accept he made a connection to Officer Garret, but the way this plan is supposed to work…doesn’t work. It’s a decent plot poorly executed.

“Captured”

That also describes this story, unfortunately. Blue Beetle is trying to catch a bunch of jewel thieves, but when Joan figures it out and gets kidnapped by the bad guys, our hero fakes an injury so he’ll be taken to Joan and the boss. Too bad the story feels cut short, Blue Beetle hanging out at the police station after the crooks manage to get rid of the loot at one point is weird, and we STILL have Mike trashing what used to be his friend in previous runs. I want to like this story but it just failed in execution.

Joan Mason: Reporter> “Mystery In C-Major”

You know what I miss? Weird nicknames for crooks. Like the two in this story: “Soupy” Mac Dougall and “Rat-Face” Regan. Of course, if this was Dick Tracy, Rat-Face would literally have a face like a rat and Soupy would…I don’t know, look like soup noodles were stuck to him or something. Five years ago crooks hid loot from a robbery but one of the boys who didn’t get arrested hid the loot that’s music related. (I linked to the comic, you can read the details. No major spoilers here.) Now Joan of course gets pulled into the case as they try to recover the loot. It start out okay but as we get closer to the end it looks like the writer was running out of time. Perhaps smaller panels would have helped? It’s like the size I use for Captain Yuletide, but that’s set up like a minicomic. It takes away from what started to be a good story.

In other words, they chose a reprint (from Blue Beetle #45, and I did “reprint” my review) that had the same mistakes as the original stories minus Mike trashing Dan all story. At least she’s blonde in all her appearances this issue.

overall

Sadly, this is where we leave the adventures of Dan Garret, rookie patrolman, his “friend” Mike Mannigan, and reporter Joan Mason, and the other two characters who disappeared. Next time Charlton reimagines our hero with a new job, origin, and second T in his last name. Before that, however, I want to post a quick overview tonight on the life of Dan Garret, before we say hello to Dan Garrett, archeologist, and his magic scarab.