Like so many before him, Mentor the Magnificent was a super-menace born of resentment.
“A physics professor, Dr. Jeremiah Clugg is ‘an acknowledged genius in his field, though he has a communication problem with his students,” noted comics historian Jeff Rovin. “Because of his frail physical appearance and timid nature, he is ‘ignored by the pretty girls, ridiculed by football playing buffoons and laughed at by faculty colleagues.’”
But when the tables are turned, the bullied becomes the bully. The professor creates a super-strong robot, Mentor than Magnificent, that can fly at Mach 5 and fire destructive gamma beams.
Clugg imprints his own mind on the robot and plans to add the Blue Beetle’s magical scarab to its powers in the process of conquering the world.
These shenanigans were published in Charlton’s Blue Beetle 54 (Aug. 1965), in the midst of a new superhero boom. Joe Gill provided the script, with Bill Fraccio and Tony Tallarico supplying indifferent art.
“The feature was clearly being produced strictly to fill a void in the Charlton line-up,” observed John Wells in American Comic Book Chronicles. “It was a measure of how hungry many readers seemed to be for superheroes — any superheroes — that even titles as poorly executed as Blue Beetle and The Shadow managed to cling to life for a year or more.
“In a strange sort of way, the titles gave hope to the would-be comic book writers and artists in the audience. Seeing the underlying potential in the character that the creators could not, these teenagers and young adults dreamed of swooping in and doing things right.”
Appearing in 10 issues from 1964 to 1966, the magically powered Blue Beetle also fought the Eye of Horus, Magno, the Scorpion, Praying Mantis-Man, Mr. Thunderbolt, a communist army and the giant mummy Kha-Ef-Re.
One of his opponents, the Red Knight, was a nod to a villain who’d fought the original Blue Beetle in Blue Beetle 18 (Jan. 1943).
In 1967, this magical Blue Beetle would be replaced by an innovative non-superpowered version created by Steve Ditko, who arrived fresh from drawing Spider-Man and Dr. Strange at Marvel Comics.
“The new Blue Beetle pounced on bad guys like Spider-Man, he had a secret identity (Ted Kord) who was deep into science like Peter Parker, and he wisecracked at every moment,” noted Peter Bosch. “It was like Parker had grown into an adult and taken on a new superhero name and costume.”
About Author
