The month in question being July 1987, of course: Blue Beetle #14, "The Phantom of Pago Island!" Written by Len Wein, pencils by Paris Cullins, inks by Dell Barras, plot assist by R.J.M. Lofficier.
We open with the last crossover's guest-stars, the Teen Titans, helping to repair Beetle's airship, the Bug. They had faced off against new (and all-but-forgotten) super-group the Hybrid, which had been created by the insane Mento. (That dick!) Ted Kord's friend and employee Curt Calhoun had been abducted after an industrial accident and became the Colossus-looking Prometheus; Ted swears to find and save him from the Hybrid; he would not, they wouldn't appear again in this series. (That wasn't the same Prometheus from JLA.) With no leads, Ted returns to his Chicago base, and reaffirms his vow to continue the legacy of the original Blue Beetle, Dan Garrett.
Meanwhile, Detective Maxwell Fisher is following the loose ends of that legacy, back to Pago Island in the Atlantic; intent on finding the truth behind Garrett's disappearance. His chartered boat is capsized, then something begins killing off the sailors one by one. Back at Kord Inc, Ted's second-in-command (and terrible, terrible love interest) Melody reads him the riot act for never being around, neglecting his duties, and missing a date. (She probably has a point, but I don't think we see the two of them happy with each other once in this series!) In France, a pharmaceutical company that had been trying to blackmail a Kord employee for a secret compound prepares to unleash a new villain, Catalyst. Another friend of Ted's, Murray Takamoto, is fired from S.T.A.R. Labs. In frustration with not being able to help his friend, Ted decides to hit up the cops for info on a missing girl that had been kidnapped under Melody's nose: the footnote points out she became a member of Hybrid, but doesn't mention which one, and Ted didn't know. Seeing the map on Fisher's desk, he realizes where he went, and that it could spell the end of his secret identity.
After a quick recap of his origin--and I don't think it was the first of the series by any means, either--Ted flies out to Pago, and finds a dying sailor, who screams to keep the beast away. Ted wonders what menace his uncle Jarvis left behind, and he finds Fisher fighting it: it's hardly a beast, it's killer robot Carapax, the Indestructible Man! The name's kind of a misnomer on both fronts; and while it's a pretty impressive robot for fighting Beetle; it also looks like Superman's going to crunch up six of them before scowling at Lex Luthor.
OK, so the Hybrid, the Beetle legacy (which would come up again in #18) and Fisher's vendetta, woes with work and Melody, Catalyst, and Murray; I'm not counting Carapax since I guess that's the main plot? Six subplots, and I know not all of them would be wrapped up before Beetle's last issue, #24.
That seems like an awful lot of busy work for someone like Beetle. Never heard of this Melody chick, so I'm assuming she either moves away never to be seen again or gets killed off...or both.
ReplyDeleteThankfully it was just the first one. And there's still more subplots to come! A couple of the subplots combine (and a few Golden Age characters show up), so there really are only 2 unresolved plotlines by the time the series ends. Say what you will about Len Wein, the man was not short on ideas!
ReplyDeleteDon't get me wrong, Blue Beetle was a great series- one of the best of its era, in fact. It was a busy book though. Definitely worth a read, especially if you can get the Showcase Presents volume.