Blue Beetle: Ted Kord & Dan Garrett's DCU History Explained

We break down what Dan Garrett and Ted Kord bring to the comics, and how they might manifest onscreen.

By Russ Burlingame

Blue Beetle is in theaters today, and while Warner Bros. and DC Studios might be hailing Jaime Reyes as a new kind of hero, his comic book counterpart is very much part of a heroic legacy going back decades. Originally created in 2005 by Keith Giffen, John Rogers, and Cully Hamner, Jaime showed up in the Infinite Crisis event -- a story kicked off by Countdown to Infinite Crisis, an oversized one-shot comic that saw the death of the previous Blue Beetle, Ted Kord. Ted gets name-dropped in the movie, where you discover that he vanished mysteriously about 20 years ago, leaving his company and daughter behind to be grabbed up by his smarmy sister Victoria (Susan Sarandon). 

That's kind of a bummer, for sure, but it's interesting that the world of Blue Beetle here starts with Jaime, but does definitely suggest there's more to the Scarab's history than we knew about. In the comics, Ted didn't use the Scarab during his time as Blue Beetle, but his predecessor, the Golden Age Blue Beetle Dan Garrett, did.

A quick note for those who might not know: the Golden Age of comics started in the 1930s and ran, depending on who you ask, until around the time of the Comics Code formation in the mid-'50s. That led into the Silver Age of comics, which ran from around 1957 until 1970 or so. There's also a Bronze Age that ended in 1986 and then an all-purpose "modern age," which tends to get further subdivided, but there's a lot less agreement on what those subdivisions should be.

The first Blue Beetle, created in 1939 by Charles Nicholas Wojtkoski for Fox Comics (part of Fox Features Syndicate). He later moved to Holyoke Publishing and then to Charlton Comics. His name was Dan Garet, and he was a rookie cop whose father had been an officer killed in the line of duty. He fought crime in a bulletproof costume but without the benefit of powers. This version was heavly inspired by The Green Hornet and proved popular enough to get his own radio show for a while.

A Silver Age version of the character, also named Dan Garrett but now with a double T at the end of his last name, was an archaeologist who got powers from a mysterious scarab found on a dig. The two Garrett versions have subsequently been blended through various retcons.

This second version of Garrett was published by Charlton Comics, who claimed to have acquired the rights to the character, although that paperwork has since been lost to history. Because of this lack of a paper trail, combined with the vagaries of US copyright law and the collapse of Charlton in the 1980s, both Garrett and (less certainly) his successor, Ted Kord, are understood to be in the public domain -- although DC, after acquiring Charlton's intellectual property, maintains a trademark on the "Blue Beetle" name. The Garrett showed up in the public domain superhero book Project Superpowers, published by Dynamite Entertainment, using the name "Big Blue."

Kord was created by Steve Ditko for Charlton Comics, and is a Batman-style hero. A wealthy inventor and Olympic-level athlete, Ted fought crime without the powers of the Scarab. Later stories would establish him as having a connection with Garrett, who had been his professor and mentor in college. After the collapse of Charlton, Ted Kord made his way to the DC Universe where, alongside numerous other Charlton characters, he would make his debut in Crisis on Infinite Earths. Charlton's Earth was one of the ones that ultimately got merged together at the end of that event, making Dan Garrett and Ted Kord a part of DC history. 

Ted was a founding member of the Justice League International when that comic launched in the late 1980s, and it was there that he met and befriended Booster Gold. The two have since become inseparable; after Ted's death, Booster -- a time-travel hero -- struggled for years with his inability to change history and save his friend. Eventually Ted was revived, and the two had a miniseries -- Blue and Gold, written by Booster Gold creator Dan Jurgens and featuring a rotating cast of star artists -- in 2021.

In the world of the Blue Beetle movie, we discover that Dan Garrett was an archaeologist who first discovered the Scarab. It isn't immediately clear whether he became a superhero with it or not, but we do know that Ted Kord was a public superhero prior to his disappearance.

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From Warner Bros. Pictures comes Blue Beetle, which arrives in theaters on August 18th, marking the DC superhero's first time on the big screen. The film, directed by Angel Manuel Soto, stars Xolo Maridueña in the title role as well as his alter ego, Jaime Reyes. Recent college grad Jaime Reyes returns home full of aspirations for his future, only to find that home is not quite as he left it. As he searches to find his purpose in the world, fate intervenes when Jaime unexpectedly finds himself in possession of an ancient relic of alien biotechnology: the Scarab. When the Scarab suddenly chooses Jaime to be its symbiotic host, he is bestowed with an incredible suit of armor capable of extraordinary and unpredictable powers, forever changing his destiny as he becomes the Super Hero BLUE BEETLE.

Starring alongside Maridueña are Adriana Barraza, Damían Alcázar, Elpidia Carrillo, Bruna Marquezine, Raoul Max Trujillo, with Oscar winner Susan Sarandon, and George Lopez (the "Rio and "Smurf" franchises). The film also stars Belissa Escobedo and Harvey Guillén. Soto directs from a screenplay by Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer, based on characters from DC. John Rickard and Zev Foreman are producing, with Walter Hamada, Galen Vaisman and Garrett Grant serving as executive producers.

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