I'm a sucker for teen superheroes, slice of life comics, and especially when you have slice of life drama in superhero comics. So it's fun to see and think about how slice of life elements seem to be baked into the idea of a teen superhero. With, uh... "middle-aged" feels wrong but is probably accurate at least in some cases, but all other superheroes it's probably easier to avoid those elements and just focus on the action. But with teen characters it's always so fun to me to see both sides of their life reflected equally, between their family at home and superheroics out in the world, and this book was another enjoyable example of what I've been talking about so far.
I just hope no-one's been taking a drink everytime I say "teen", "superhero" or "slice of life" in this review...
But anyway, this was good fun. I'd definitely suggest checking this out if you're interested in getting to know Jamie as a character, whether that's because of the new movie coming out or not, but I've always thought he was a cool idea and wanted to read his comics, so I'm glad I finally did. Love his design, it feels so unique and striking, stands out in a satisfying way.
The artwork was good but not to my taste at times, which brought down my enjoyment a bit, but it was still an entertaining read. There was a nice balance of familiar teen superhero tropes made fresh and original for Jamie as a character (with all his supporting characters involved here) with some creative, unique, entertaining and again overall fun ideas for his new adventures as the new Blue Beetle, and how he comes to grips with those powers over the 12 issues collected here.
Finally I wanted to mention that at first it felt like I was missing some context from Jamie's first appearance in Infinite Crisis, the big DC event that this series spun out of, but over the issues everything you need to know is explained so it didn't impact my enjoyment of the book.
If you want more of Joe's comic thoughts and reviews, you can find him on Twitter @JoeLovesComics and on the League of Comic Geeks also @JoeLovesComics.
You can also find his podcast on Twitter @JoeTalksComics, which you can listen to through Anchor, where you can find links to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts and Spotify, or you can click those hyperlinks directly.
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