Blue Beetle #7: A Tribute

A satisfying tribute issue within an ongoing series can be tricky. An ongoing series is usually juggling various plots and character storylines. Do those get put on hold? Do those continue but with random callouts to the person being memorialized? And can either one be done well? Blue Beetle #7 aims for the latter strategy in their celebration of Keith Giffen. Can the issue’s large creative team pull it off? With the help of some time travel shenanigans, they just might.

Ted Kord is lost, and Booster Gold needs Jaime’s help to find him. While rehabilitating with Booster, Ted tinkered with the time sphere and got temporally sliced and diced. Now it’s up to Jaime and Booster to resemble him in the present. Blue Beetle #7 follows their time travel adventure from the Justice League International embassy to a Legion battlefield to the heart of continuity itself. But despite the chaos swirling around him, Jaime is wrestling with Khaji Da’s decision to kill Blood Scarab in the previous issue. Can either Blue Beetle make it back where they started in one piece?

Blue Beetle #7 is balanced. As praise, that sounds lackluster. But Trujillo’s script successfully blends appreciation for Giffen’s work at DC with Jaime’s current character development and two separate plot lines (though one is considerably less serious than the other). The hunt for Ted Kord is a real plot and it does drive the issue, but it’s relatively simple and doesn’t really need to be serviced beyond a line of dialogue every few pages. The Giffen tribute is built on that plot, and there is plenty of room for both to breathe. So is Blue Beetle #7 very obviously a tribute issue? Yes. Does that tribute get in the way of telling a story that makes sense in the context of what the larger series is doing? No.

Giffen fans will do a lot of smiling during Blue Beetle #7. The issue isn’t a cameo-a-thon, nor does it visit a different setting for a different Giffen series on every page. Trujillo picks and chooses what he uses, and ultimately less is more. The tribute elements don’t totally steal the spotlight from the regular story until the final pages when Trujillo does his best to directly channel Giffen’s more off-the-wall humor. And in the end, Trujillo does a pretty decent job.

The part of Blue Beetle #7 that comes completely out of left field is Jaime’s conversation with his mother. Facing the Blood Scarab took a toll on Jaime. And the events in Blue Beetle: Graduation Day weren’t much of a picnic, either. Trujillo delivers a scene where Jaime can unburden himself in a way he hasn’t been able to with anyone else in the series. Jaime’s mom isn’t worried about the Reach or Horizon or Blood Scarab. She’s just worried about him. It’s a solid four page scene that steals the show.

The decision to run through different artists and colorists for this issue, several of whom had previously worked with Giffen, is obvious. It’s true that the combination of styles is jarring. But given the issue’s nature as a tribute, this is understandable. Additionally, the time travel story helps smooth the inelegance a bit because the changes in time mark the shifts in art teams. These kinds of firm endpoints, as opposed to random shifts for no evident reason, always help justify an art change. The art also feels connected to the scene’s mood. For instance, Bustos’ style is right at home for a less than serious call back to Giffen’s JLI days but might not fit a no-holds barred battle with the Legion.

Coloring stays relatively steady in the sense that the issue doesn’t veer too far from its very vibrant status quo. Blue Beetle #7 never feels like it’s stepping into truly foreign visual territory.

Every Giffen related series or character gets extra flair for its introduction courtesy of Gattoni’s lettering. The first time they get called out, it’s done with their series’ title logo. When Jaime sees Booster in the beginning of the issue and yells out his name, it’s in the Booster Gold vol 2 logo with his name in yellow next to a blue star. When “Justice League International” appears mid-sentence, the title gets its familiar logo while the surrounding words are in normal sized, ordinary Blue Beetle interior font. Gattoni nails each of these.