Warning: Spoilers for Blue Beetle #1 ahead!
Blue Beetle and his friends are a group of teens with attitude using their advanced alien technology to protect Palmera City — and that alone would be enough to make them DC’s version of the much vaunted Power Rangers. But the distinct shape of their armor and growing roster of color-coded teammates calls to mind another tokusatsu series: the insect-themed Big Bad Beetleborgs.
Josh Trujillo, Adrián Gutiérrez, Wil Quintana, and Lucas Gattoni’s Blue Beetle #1 opens with Jaime fighting off the Mad Men while Ted Kord oversees the operation. He’s quickly joined by his new allies who are empowered by their own scarabs: the incredibly strong Dynastes and the size-shifting Nitida.
Although their help is welcome, their inexperience with their powers leads to heavy collateral damage; Jaime is concerned, but Ted Kord reassures him that Dynastes and Nitida have a great mentor in Jaime, who is teaching and leading them. Later, while Jaime relaxes on the beach with his friends, Brenda receives a mysterious call and leaves; shortly after, a new figure in red scarab armor infiltrates Kord Industries and viciously stabs Ted.
Blue Beetle Is Setting Up the Scarab Sentai
Jaime’s solo tenure as Blue Beetle takes on a very different tone now that there are yellow, green, and red scarabs in the mix, with the futuristic armor and primary-color coding calling to mind the Japanese tokusatsu action genre. The genre first gained widespread popularity in the U.S. with 1993’s Mighty Morphin Power Rangers; to make the show relatable to American audiences, new footage of the American characters and English-language storylines was paired with stock footage of Japanese action show sequences. Producing company Saban was quick to try and replicate Power Rangers‘ success with shows like 1996’s Big Bad Beetleborgs, in which three teens break into a haunted house and are granted beetle-inspired superhero forms by a friendly ghost.
The colors are different, but the beetle motif instantly brings Blue Beetle’s new lineup to mind. Although it is just the first issue, Blue Beetle #1 bursts with tropes straight out of the tokusatsu genre, with a team of friends banding together to take on evil. Dynastes takes the role of the bruiser, whose strength often causes more problems than it solves, while Jaime’s experience in the field makes him come off as the (comparatively) cool-headed leader. The issue also implies that Brenda may be the figure in the red scarab armor, which ties into the trope of a teammate corrupted or compromised by the enemy (like Power Rangers‘ original Green Ranger).
Blue Beetle Embraces A Classic Teen Action Genre
Between the beetle theme and tokusatsu aesthetic, it’s hard not to see how the new Blue Beetle series honors the legacy of the action shows of the 1990s — Big Bad Beetleborgs in particular. The flavor of teens with attitude and power suits that Power Rangers popularized in the ’90s may look different as part of the DC Universe, but it clearly lives on in the pages of Blue Beetle.
Blue Beetle #1 is now available from DC Comics.
