Blue Beetle #9
	Story Title: 'Inside Man' Writer: Keith Giffen & John Rogers (Guest) Artist: Duncan Rouleau Letterer: Phil Balsman Colorist: Guy Major Cover: Duncan Rouleau Asst. Editor: Rachel Gluckstein Editor: Joan Hilty Published by: DC Comics
	Reviewed by: Bruce Logan

This issue, the Blue Beetle finally gets going…takes off…spreads his wings…gets a Blue Beetle cave…uh, apartment...ahem, room. Well, what else do you expect; after all, he is a school-going teenager from a middle-income family.

To start with, a major part of this issue is devoted to getting some info on Mr. Black, the Peacemaker, who he is, what he did before he got tied into the scarab and how did he come to be like that, and that too straight from the horse’s mouth. A ‘cape’ (i.e. costume), Peace Boy stumbled onto the same pyramid that Dan Garrett got the scarab from, only unlike Dan, Peace got his hands, or rather fingers on the mother load, and man did it ‘FRR-ZAAAPP’ the daylights outta him.

Back to Jaime and his zoo crew, this issue brings in two more bugs. Showing up last issue (when Paco went to El Diablo’s), the brother-sister (?) duo are set to be the ‘info hub’ to Paco’s strategy and Jaime’s powers. Although a bit hokey (at the outset), this development strikes me both as funny as with potential. If anything, it gets Jaime away from Oracle, though it is only a matter of time before the bytes run into each other. Still, as I mentioned earlier, Jaime is safe from the Buds, after all, no matter what the tech, the scarab can’t give him the correct body parts to get into DC’s All-Female team. A point here. Why isn’t there an All-Male team? After all, there shouldn’t be any opposition to it, what with gender equality an’ all. Why not a team where one of the cardinal rules is that the members come their own pool cue and balls, inbuilt ones. A (gimmick) good for the goose should be good for the gander. Then again, I don’t think that there will be many buyers for it, after all, in a still predominantly male comic reading demographic, male beefcake doesn’t have as many takers for female cheesecake.

On the art front, first/last seen with #5, this issue sees the return of Duncan Rouleau and although a major veering off from Cully Hamner’s clear crisp lines, this turn did work out better than the previous one. While #5 was too dark and too lined for its own good (and for comprehension), the art here works within the setup for a teen title.

Conclusion: Almost forget. Fire also shows up (Checkmate is monitoring De Lama’s operation). The issue ends with Brenda getting her hands on a Mother Box and booming away to…well, somewhere.

RATING: 8.5/10