LEGENDARY HEROES #36

THE BLUE BEETLE

The Blue Beetle was an interesting comic book character that seemed to always be flirting with huge success, without attaining the fame and notoriety of the rival DC characters of Superman and Batman.  Perhaps if the character had been in more capable hands the outcome might have been different.  The story of the Blue Beetle's creation begins with Victor S. Fox, born in England in 1893 and who immigrated to America with his family in 1898, eventually settling in NYC.  Some sources hint at a criminal past to Fox, as court records show that a Victor S. Fox was arrested in 1929 for illegal stock trading, but there's no way to prove that this was the same man.  What is certain is that Fox became an accountant at DC comics where he saw the vast sums of money that were being made by this new thing called comic books, and he decided to start his own company.  He and partner Bob Farrell launched Fox Feature Syndicate in the late 1930s and contracted the Eisner - Iger Studio to produce content for a comic book.  Will Eisner and Jerry Iger had established a studio full of cartoonists whose sole purpose was to create comic book stories for publishers who didn't want the expense of hiring a bunch of their own writers and artists.  Eisner, at the request of Fox, created a superhero to mimic Superman, and Eisner came up with Wonder Man for Fox's first publication Wonder Comics #1, May 1939.  Wonder Man was a blonde-haired duplicate of Superman in a red & yellow costume.  The similarities were not wasted on DC who promptly sued Fox for copyright infringement.  After losing the court case Fox dropped Eisner & Iger and hired his own creative team, one of whom, Charles Nicholas Wojtkowski, came up with the idea of the Blue Beetle.

Dan Garrett was a second generation police officer, his own father having been killed by criminals, who becomes the Blue Beetle by ingesting "Vitamin 2X" that was invented by Dr. Franz a local pharmacist.  Franz also invents the suit worn by Dan Garrett, as thin and light as silk but stronger than steel.  As the Blue Beetle he fights crime outside the law.  The supporting cast of characters included Joan Mason, beautiful blonde reporter for the Daily Blade, who would ultimately star in her own backup stories in the comic book series.  And there was Mike Mannigan, a stereotypical Irish partner of Dan Garrett on the police force.  Mike, despite all evidence to the contrary, believes that the Blue Beetle is a criminal and is constantly trying to arrest him.  During WWII the Blue Beetle would become a government agent sent overseas on secret missions.  The Blue Beetle made his first appearance in Mystery Men Comics #1 in August 1939.  He was quickly given his own title that ran for 60 issues.  The character of the Blue Beetle was very popular and became the best-selling comic book produced by Fox, but it never approached the fame of Superman.  But Fox was not to be outdone.  If Superman had a daily comic strip, then so would the Blue Beetle.  Fox used his own syndicate to branch out into newspapers, which was a mistake.  Fox Features was not set up to do this, as they were a comic book publisher.  Nevertheless, Blue Beetle appeared as a comic strip on January 8, 1940 and was pseudonymously drawn by a young Jack Kirby as Charles Nicholas (this was the Fox house name to credit all Blue Beetle stories).  My research has found only two newspapers in the country to carry the strip - The Boston Evening Transcript and The East St. Louis Journal - and if there were more there weren't many, and the last strip appeared on September 27, a scant 9 months after debuting.  If a larger syndicate set up for newspaper distribution like Hearst, King Features, or the Chicago Tribune had distributed the strip, who knows what could have happened.  

CBS radio wanted a comic superhero to compete with the popular "Adventures of Superman" and they set their sights on the Blue Beetle whose comic book sales were respectable.  The radio version of the Blue Beetle debuted on May 15, 1940 with film actor Frank Lovejoy providing the voice of the hero.  The show was a failure.  Lovejoy brought a maniacal, almost sadistic laugh to the character, as though the Blue Beetle took sick pride in hurting criminals.  Lovejoy was replaced after 13 episodes by an uncredited actor, but the damage had been done and the radio show ended on September 13 after only four months of being on the air.  And yet, the popularity of the character was undeniable.  The World's Fair in NYC sponsored a "Blue Beetle Day" on August 7, 1940 that featured 300 children in a relay race.  It would seem that the only thing standing between the Blue Beetle and success was Victor Fox himself.  Fox seemed to be unsuited for taking the popular character to the next level.  Fox was a little man (5'2") with a big cigar who used to declare in his British accent that he was "The king of comics!".  While some found him to be an eccentric oddity, others thought of him as a loud, menacing, scary little guy.  Fox Publishing fell on hard times and owed money to its' creditors, and ended up farming out the Blue Beetle title to Holyoke Publishing for issues #12 through #30, at which point Fox got his affairs back in order and brought Blue Beetle back to the fold.  

But the times were changing.  While Fox produced a wide variety of comics in several genres, there was a post-war decline in superhero comics that resulted in Fox concentrating on horror and crime comics, including some of the most notorious titles in the industry.  While EC comics found great success with horror and crime, other publishers tried to duplicate their success without fully appreciating that EC's success was based upon great writing and artwork.  This resulted in other publishers going in for wild, sensational stories of sex, sadism and violence.  When comic historians describe sleaze, sex and violence as Fox's obsession they are masters of understatement.  The adventures of the Blue Beetle became darker, full of sadistic violence and scantily clad women.  Eventually the Blue Beetle was relegated to hosting true crime stories.  Fox filed for bankruptcy protection in July 1950 and the last issue of the Blue Beetle appeared in August.  The Comics Code Authority put Fox out of business, and that was that.  Except that Charlton Comics ended up with the Blue Beetle.  The story is that Fox sold the Blue Beetle to Charlton, though there is no proof of this.  And somehow Charlton acquired the printing plates for several Blue Beetle stories.  Charlton ran these stories in 1955 and then didn't do anything with the character until June 1964 when they revived the hero and gave him a different origin.  In this reboot Dan Garrett is an archaeologist who finds a mystical scarab while on a dig in Egypt.  The scarab would give him super strength, vision, and flight, and all Garrett had to do to transform into the Blue Beetle was to say the phrase "Kaji Dah!"  This was part of a superhero wave that Charlton was undertaking in the mid-1960s to cash in on the newfound popularity of costumed heroes.  These titles, despite a good creative team, didn't sell well and the line was ended in 1967.

Charlton fell on hard times and in 1983 they sold their superhero characters to DC, who hired Alan Moore to write a story featuring the characters.  What Alan Moore created was the Watchmen, basing his new characters upon the old Charlton heroes.  The Blue Beetle was the inspiration for Nite Owl, and in a roundabout way finally found the huge popularity that had always alluded him.  What the Blue Beetle illustrated in it's original run at Fox was that the industry was big enough to find success outside of the DC realm.  And that if the right character came along and were handled properly, DC could face some real competition.  Which is exactly what happened a short time later, in the form of a character named...well...that's another story.