Blue Beetle No. 1 (1964) Cover

The second Blue Beetle was given his powers by the spirit of a Pharaoh through the blue beetle scarab, appearing in ten issues of his own magazine beginning in 1964. He wasn’t a hit and was supplanted by the third Beetle Ted Kord in 1966, created by Steve Ditko.

DC bought the second Beetle as part of their acquisition of the Charlton action heroes. He appeared in Secret Origins 2 (1986) but has been rarely used ever since.

I like the second Beetle quite a bit and for this art reconstruction I recovered the illustration from a cover scan. Who knows where the original art is sometimes?

Most sources on the web credit Frank McLaughlin as the artist. However, Mr. McLaughlin has told us he did the inks only. The pencils are perhaps by Bill Fraccio or Bill Molno. If you have info, please leave a comment below.

The published cover.

Before and after. Cover converted to greyscale and the remaining colour blocks were painted out, while linework was cleaned up and made solid black.

Trade dress re-created.

Original colour re-created.

New colour.

For this interior page, dropping the colour gave results less than ideal. So the lineart was re-created by tracing over the scan.

As published.

Re-created lineart.

New colour and lettering.