The Four Color Media Monitor

Film Fugitives cited a few comics from not very long ago, which they recommend reading before going to see the new Blue Beetle movie. And one of those, lo and behold, is one of the worst universe-spanning crossovers of the mid-2000s, Infinite Crisis:

The second major crisis event in DC comics, Infinite Crisis, led to several significant changes to the DC multiverse, among which was the introduction of the third version of Blue Beetle, Mexican teenager Jaime Reyes, in the third issue of the series. Before Jaime, Dan Garrett and Ted Kord were the first superheroes to adopt the moniker of the Blue Beetle. Dan Garrett, an archaeologist, had received several superhuman powers from a mystical azure scarab beetle conduit he had discovered in Egypt, and operated as a crimefighter, taking the name Blue Beetle. After Dan Garrett’s demise, his student, Ted Kord, took the mantle of Blue Beetle out of respect for his mentor and operated as a self-made grounded hero, as he didn’t receive any such superpowers from Scarab. During the events of Infinite Crisis, a massive shakeup happens in the established DC Universe as an anti-metahuman conspiracy grows strong, and Ted Kord finds himself captured by the former JLI (Justice League International) ally Maxwell Lord, who has turned rogue ever since. As the Lord provides him with an ultimatum to either side with him in the anti-metahuman conspiracy or choose death, Kord scoffs at his proposal and receives a bullet in his head. Dan’s Scarab, which Ted had entrusted to Shazam, was kept in the Rock of Eternity, which was destroyed, resulting in the Scarab being lost.

The Scarab ended up with teenager Jaime Reyes and fused itself with his body, thereby unlocking its full potential and granting various abilities to Jaime. The Scarab turned out to be alien in nature as it allowed Jaime to access advanced technology with ease, and using it, Jaime was able to help other superheroes take down Brother Eye, the chief mechanism built to serve the anti-metahuman conspiracy.

So Kord dies a bloody death...and we're just supposed to fully embrace Reyes taking over the Beetle role entirely unquestioned. And no complaints should be made how Lord was turned into a murderous megalomaniac either, except when Wonder Woman later broke his neck to stop him from mind-controlling Superman, a rescue effort for which WW gets blamed. All this told by the film site without any irony or objectivity, my my. If it weren't for the concerns this new movie's likely to be woke, the premise on which Infinite Crisis built would still be enough to discourage me from attending. Let's be clear. It's not that DC decided to replace a white character with a POC that's the problem. It's that they did it all at the white character's expense, making them look like expendable garbage who were worthless to start with, and don't deserve even an ounce of respect. As a result, this was even worse than some of the race-swapping Marvel did a decade ago. Certainly, the projects coming from Marvel weren't built on talented writing any more than DC's. But when the original white DC characters are subject to bloody executions and transformed into vile criminals, that's going quite far, and that's why it's actually less acceptable. Either way, those social justice pandering directions DC took at the time did have their own share of early traces of wokeness. Marvel was just making things worse in terms of divisive politics.

So anyway, this news only discourages me all the more, and demonstrates how DC's diversity propaganda of the mid-2000s grew out of some very grimy directions in turn. That's why it just doesn't add up to a good movie.

Labels: crossoverloading, dc comics, golden calf of death, golden calf of villainy, moonbat writers, msm propaganda, politics, violence