The Blue Beetle is ON THE AIR! ![]()
The Blue Beetle had a short but wild career on radio, starting May 15, 1940 and running for forty-eight episodes until September 13, 1940. (The stories were told in two installments with a cliffhanger ending the first episode, two days apart... think the 1966 Batman showwas influenced by this format?) Unlike the Green Hornet or the Shadow, the Beetle was much more a flamboyant no-fooling superhero, completewith a dramatic costume and powers. Although it was mostly a serious crimebusting show, the program also seemed to have a bit of a tongue in cheek approach; when the hero is being pursued in his car by the police, the narrator wonders if the Blue Beetle will be caught because he obeys proper driving procedures and stops for a red light.
We're following the exploits of young Dan Garret, a rookie patrolman who is frustrated by unnecessary red tape (you know, the regulations to protect us against false arrest and harassment and excessive violence by the police, that red tape). So he enforces the law when it works and
goes beyond it when it seems a good idea. Dan is an okay sort of radio hero, talking tough or wisecracking in the classic tradition, laughing a bit too often like Zorro at his most manic.
As the Blue Beetle, Dan wears a full suit of blue chain mail, flexible as steel but stronger than silk (...errr, wait. That's flexible as silk but stronger than steel), that lets him scoff at gangsters`
guns. Well, I suppose. Mail would stop a knife or arrow well enough, but even if a bullet wouldn't penetrate the suit, the impact would still break a rib, knock the breath out of a guy or rupture an organ here and there. If he's wearing a cowl of mail (as usually depicted) rather than a rigid helmet, a .45 slug in the head would still get him a nice obituary in the paper the next day.
You have to wonder about Dr Franz. He owns a small, not too busy apothecary on a city side street, where he's often found dusting bottles. Yet the guy's a genius whose Vitamin 2X alone would make him a millionaire and possibly snare a Nobel Prize in chemistry. In addition to the megavitamin and the blue armor, Franz invents things like a paralyzer raygun and a poison detector ring. I can only guess he had his reasons for staying obscure. Maybe he was wanted by the authorities
somewhere for some unethical experiments.
Be that as it may, in his origin story, Dan Garret has been shot in the stomach by a tommygun and it doesn't look good for his chances. As he hangs between life and death, Franz sneaks into his hospital room one night and shoots him up with 2X. The next morning, his wounds healed and feeling great, Dan demands to be released and the doctors have conniption fits. Knowing a good thing when he sees it, the idealistic rookie goes into partnership with the eccentric pharmacist. Putting on the mask and armor, getting a hit of Vitamin 2X, the Blue Beetle rushes out to give crooks something to really worry about.
As to why he takes that name, well, he is wearing a blue protective shell. Possibly, he was a big fan of the Green Hornet. As the Blue Beetle, Dan mostly takes on the usual racketeers and saboteurs that the Hornet also tackled. He seems to encounter quite a few fake ghosts, as well as a suspicious sea serpent that's terrorizing a resort town (could it be a hoax to ruin business?). My favorite Beetle adversary was the Purple Dragon, a white mastermind who was stirring up trouble between rival Chinese tongs to get in on the action. (Here is where we learn the Blue Beetle is an incarnation of an ancient god of judgement, but not much is done with this intriguing idea.)
Starting out in MYSTERY MAN COMICS in 1939, the Beetle was quite popular in his day, getting his own title and also appearing in THE BIG THREE. He had a syndicated newspaper strip with art by the young but impressive Jack Kirby. Add the radio show, and he was a triple threat. I can't imagine why the Beetle didn't get a shot as his own pulp magazine, where he would have looked perfectly natural up there alongside The Black Hood and the Green Lama, but then by 1940, the trend was for characters to step over from pulps to comics. Since then, our boy in blue has had as many incarnations as a Time Lord, including a complete (and very cool) revamping by Steve Ditko in the 1960s that survived over at DC. But of course, by now the Ted Kord character has likely been slaughtered and replaced by a new, younger version.
The Blue Beetle had a short but wild career on radio, starting May 15, 1940 and running for forty-eight episodes until September 13, 1940. (The stories were told in two installments with a cliffhanger ending the first episode, two days apart... think the 1966 Batman showwas influenced by this format?) Unlike the Green Hornet or the Shadow, the Beetle was much more a flamboyant no-fooling superhero, completewith a dramatic costume and powers. Although it was mostly a serious crimebusting show, the program also seemed to have a bit of a tongue in cheek approach; when the hero is being pursued in his car by the police, the narrator wonders if the Blue Beetle will be caught because he obeys proper driving procedures and stops for a red light.
We're following the exploits of young Dan Garret, a rookie patrolman who is frustrated by unnecessary red tape (you know, the regulations to protect us against false arrest and harassment and excessive violence by the police, that red tape). So he enforces the law when it works and
goes beyond it when it seems a good idea. Dan is an okay sort of radio hero, talking tough or wisecracking in the classic tradition, laughing a bit too often like Zorro at his most manic.
As the Blue Beetle, Dan wears a full suit of blue chain mail, flexible as steel but stronger than silk (...errr, wait. That's flexible as silk but stronger than steel), that lets him scoff at gangsters`
guns. Well, I suppose. Mail would stop a knife or arrow well enough, but even if a bullet wouldn't penetrate the suit, the impact would still break a rib, knock the breath out of a guy or rupture an organ here and there. If he's wearing a cowl of mail (as usually depicted) rather than a rigid helmet, a .45 slug in the head would still get him a nice obituary in the paper the next day.
You have to wonder about Dr Franz. He owns a small, not too busy apothecary on a city side street, where he's often found dusting bottles. Yet the guy's a genius whose Vitamin 2X alone would make him a millionaire and possibly snare a Nobel Prize in chemistry. In addition to the megavitamin and the blue armor, Franz invents things like a paralyzer raygun and a poison detector ring. I can only guess he had his reasons for staying obscure. Maybe he was wanted by the authorities
somewhere for some unethical experiments.
Be that as it may, in his origin story, Dan Garret has been shot in the stomach by a tommygun and it doesn't look good for his chances. As he hangs between life and death, Franz sneaks into his hospital room one night and shoots him up with 2X. The next morning, his wounds healed and feeling great, Dan demands to be released and the doctors have conniption fits. Knowing a good thing when he sees it, the idealistic rookie goes into partnership with the eccentric pharmacist. Putting on the mask and armor, getting a hit of Vitamin 2X, the Blue Beetle rushes out to give crooks something to really worry about.
As to why he takes that name, well, he is wearing a blue protective shell. Possibly, he was a big fan of the Green Hornet. As the Blue Beetle, Dan mostly takes on the usual racketeers and saboteurs that the Hornet also tackled. He seems to encounter quite a few fake ghosts, as well as a suspicious sea serpent that's terrorizing a resort town (could it be a hoax to ruin business?). My favorite Beetle adversary was the Purple Dragon, a white mastermind who was stirring up trouble between rival Chinese tongs to get in on the action. (Here is where we learn the Blue Beetle is an incarnation of an ancient god of judgement, but not much is done with this intriguing idea.)
Starting out in MYSTERY MAN COMICS in 1939, the Beetle was quite popular in his day, getting his own title and also appearing in THE BIG THREE. He had a syndicated newspaper strip with art by the young but impressive Jack Kirby. Add the radio show, and he was a triple threat. I can't imagine why the Beetle didn't get a shot as his own pulp magazine, where he would have looked perfectly natural up there alongside The Black Hood and the Green Lama, but then by 1940, the trend was for characters to step over from pulps to comics. Since then, our boy in blue has had as many incarnations as a Time Lord, including a complete (and very cool) revamping by Steve Ditko in the 1960s that survived over at DC. But of course, by now the Ted Kord character has likely been slaughtered and replaced by a new, younger version.
statistics: Posted by doctorhermes428 — 7:50 PM - 1 day ago — Replies 2 — Views 215