Jaime Reyes is just a high school student just trying to get by in life and support his family. Despite aspirations of wanting to study the stars, he’s met with the harsh reality of others advocating for strict laws against border communities and immigrants. If life hasn’t gotten any worse, on top of that, he encounters an alien scarab-like artifact that will change his life forever. Can Jaime balance a life of family, academia, and superherodom while dealing with alienation from his community and the stars above?
Julio Anta crafts a new interpretation of Jaime Reyes AKA Blue Beetle, crafting this standalone tale for a young adult audience that aren’t familiar with the character’s history in the main continuity nor the comics. What’s great is that this book is reader-friendly to both longtime comic fans of the character while also welcoming new readers that have no familiarity with the comics apart from the live-action depiction and the various other media interpretations of the character. This iteration of Blue Beetle would’ve made a great fit within the latest line of Milestone Comics due to the social and political conflicts that Jaime faces aside from the intergalactic ones, making his story feel grounded and authentic to the realities that people of various colors and creeds tend to face more often than not. Anta does a superb job writing a well-paced action adventure comic that has a lot of depth, challenging readers by taking Jaime to places that reflect the harsh realities that get downplayed in other spaces of media of the like.
The cast of characters, such as Jaime’s father, Brenda, and Paco, all have a charm to them, each of them supporting and challenging Jaime in ways that contribute to his journey as a hero in the making. This iteration of the character feels like a solid character that has his own motivations and dreams that adds a new palette to the character that Keith Giffen, John Rogers, and Cully Hammer created, contributing new elements to the character that have never been explored prior. This book does a great job establishing conflict, providing character development, character study, social commentary, and action, all the while being a well-paced, young adult graphic novel that is as thoughtful as it is entertaining.
In regard to the art department, Jacoby Salcedo illustrates the book with an emotive, animated style that would easily make a fantastic template for an animated adaptation if there ever was one. Whether it’s his gesture work, character designs, and layouts, Salcedo does a solid job illustrating every character’s look distinct and memorable to the reader. Francesco Segala does an excellent job embellishing Salcedo’s artwork with beautiful colors that add another layer of texture and life to the art. Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou provides the lettering, giving each character expressive voices that bring life to the characters and the action that occurs within this book, making it a smooth read that ties the art and script together exceptionally well. I highly recommend picking This Is Our Land: A Blue Beetle Story and adding it to your library. It works for teens, and it is great as a book in general for anyone and everyone else. It’s topical to the times, educational and entertaining.
Newsdesk