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A review by ktothelau
Blue Beetle, Vol. 1: The More Things Change by Keith Giffen
2.0
[Read in single issues]
Jaime Reyes as the Blue Beetle has interested me and been on my reading list for a while. When I first discovered the character watching Batman: The Brave and the Bold, seeing Jaime as a relatable teen arguing with the sentient suit that gives him his powers, his New 52 line had already been cancelled. Then Geoff Johns wrote Rebirth and added a little scene with Jaime Reyes that I thought was very interesting.
In short, Keith Giffen doesn't deliver in this volume until issue #6, where he kind of gives a small splice of what the series could be.
Getting the obvious out of the way, the dialogue here is absolutely horrible. I tell myself it feels like a first draft, but then there are moments of repetition and sentences upon sentences of nothing going on. By then, it feels more like a very bloated outline with the characters speaking mostly hot air. The dialogue here isn't flat, it's completely empty. This, in turn, makes all the characters just a bunch of background noise, not even close to cementing themselves as prominent characters.
I know previous iterations of Blue Beetle gives Jaime Reyes internal monologues, sometimes even arguing with the scarab on his back. None of this is seen here until issue #6 for 2 panels, and it's just Jaime reminding us why he's in the spot he's currently at.
So yeah, fair warning: There's a whole lot of nothing going on in this volume. The plot is spread so thin it's hard to keep track of. If it wasn't for the last issue of this volume actually starting a plot and the art itself being serviceable, I would have given this 1 star.
I'm still reading this in issue form and am about to start #8. Hopefully this series gets better. I'd hate to see Jaime Reyes get cancelled a second time.
UPDATE: Though Keith Giffen still plots the story, issues #8 and #9 (all that are released as of writing this) have a different author that makes the story readable. It's still not great yet, but it has certainly bumped up to a 3-star read.
Jaime Reyes as the Blue Beetle has interested me and been on my reading list for a while. When I first discovered the character watching Batman: The Brave and the Bold, seeing Jaime as a relatable teen arguing with the sentient suit that gives him his powers, his New 52 line had already been cancelled. Then Geoff Johns wrote Rebirth and added a little scene with Jaime Reyes that I thought was very interesting.
In short, Keith Giffen doesn't deliver in this volume until issue #6, where he kind of gives a small splice of what the series could be.
Getting the obvious out of the way, the dialogue here is absolutely horrible. I tell myself it feels like a first draft, but then there are moments of repetition and sentences upon sentences of nothing going on. By then, it feels more like a very bloated outline with the characters speaking mostly hot air. The dialogue here isn't flat, it's completely empty. This, in turn, makes all the characters just a bunch of background noise, not even close to cementing themselves as prominent characters.
I know previous iterations of Blue Beetle gives Jaime Reyes internal monologues, sometimes even arguing with the scarab on his back. None of this is seen here until issue #6 for 2 panels, and it's just Jaime reminding us why he's in the spot he's currently at.
So yeah, fair warning: There's a whole lot of nothing going on in this volume. The plot is spread so thin it's hard to keep track of. If it wasn't for the last issue of this volume actually starting a plot and the art itself being serviceable, I would have given this 1 star.
I'm still reading this in issue form and am about to start #8. Hopefully this series gets better. I'd hate to see Jaime Reyes get cancelled a second time.
UPDATE: Though Keith Giffen still plots the story, issues #8 and #9 (all that are released as of writing this) have a different author that makes the story readable. It's still not great yet, but it has certainly bumped up to a 3-star read.