Blue Beetle: Blue Beetle Challenges the Red Knight

by Various

Genres: Dc Comics, Comics

368 pages, Paperback

Published August 12, 2025

About the author

Various is the correct author for any book with multiple unknown authors, and is acceptable for books with multiple known authors, especially if not all are known or the list is very long (over 50).

If an editor is known, however, Various is not necessary. List the name of the editor as the primary author (with role "editor"). Contributing authors' names follow it.

Note: WorldCat is an excellent resource for finding author information and contents of anthologies.

Reviews

[Doug Duncan · Rating 4 out of 5]

while it starts slow, this gets really good by the end. especially after Steve ditko takes over, I found myself really engaged in the stories and would be very interested in reading more.

[Gary Sassaman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an impulse buy for me—I’m trying to stick to just the DC Finest volumes featuring Superman and Batman—but I’m glad I bought it. At 368 pages, it’s the smallest DC Finest book I’ve seen so far, and it reprints all the Charlton Blue Beetle stories from 1964 through 1968, plus one Charlton Bullseye story from 1981, before Blue Beetle moved over to DC. The first ten issues of Blue Beetle by writer Joe Gill and artists Bill Fraccio and Tony Tallarico are forgettable at best, but it’s nice to see them reprinted. Steve Ditko’s very Spider-Man like revamp of the character kicks in with four issues of Captain Atom (83-86) and then five issues of his own series. Issues 1 through 4 are great—even though they’re marred by the awful lettering of “A. Machine,” typewriter-like lettering that’s ugly and hard to read, more than likely set up by an office worker. Iissue 5 shows Ditko’s increasing philosophical interests coming to the forefront, with some of the longest (and most tedious) word balloons I’ve ever seen in a comic book. Re-reading these Ditko revamp stories (all of which were plotted by Ditko but “scripted” by Gary Friedrich and D. C. Glanzman) made me realize they’re much better than I remembered, and part of that, no doubt, is due to the fact that Dick Giordano was editor of what he called Charlton’s “Action Heroes” line. These issues are as close to Ditko’s Spider-Man work as you’re going to get, better than his Creeper stories at DC.

[Matt Fuller · Rating 4 out of 5]

Surprised at how different the original Blue Beetle is to Ted Kord who shows up later in this. I enjoyed both versions for different reasons. Covers 1964-1972.

[Ángel Javier · Rating 3 out of 5]

Para empezar, las historias del Blue Beetle original, Dan Garrett, son flojas, con un dibujo bastante regulero, aunque resultan más o menos entretenidas. Las de Ted están muy bien dibujadas por Ditko, y el guion resulta interesante, pero las tres estrellas son, en realidad, porque, teniendo unas 300 páginas menos que el resto de DC Finest, cuesta exactamente lo mismo, lo que me parece un timo y un abuso para el aficionado interesado en estas historias. No puede ser que se cobre lo mismo por una colección de 360 páginas que por una de 600 o 700. Hasta ahora, la línea DC Finest me parecía impecable. Este es el primer borrón, y muy grande. Esperemos que esta no sea la forma de proceder habitual de la editorial.