Blue Beetle #16 Review and *SPOILERS*

Stop Stopwatch 

Written By: Christopher Sebela

Art By: Scott Kolins, Romulo Fajardo Jr., Josh Reed

Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: December 27, 2017

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

It's time to jump back into some Blue Beetle action and see how Jaime is going to deal with a town controlled by a time traveler, who has the ability to keep everyone inside with time altering device..... and can make the people of the town young or old........ because he needs them to steal things....... goddamn, this story is convoluted as hell.  Okay so, Jaime and his friends got trapped in a town out in the desert after going on a road trip and now it's up to him to get them home safe and sound...... with a mess of a story wrapped around it.  Let's jump into this issue and see if things become clearer or if the nonsense just starts stacking up.  Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

Our issue begins with Jaime finding out about Paco and Brenda being an item, after it looks like an atomic bomb has gone off in the distance and everyone is kissing their loved ones and their asses goodbye, but this is just a glimmer of a past time that doesn't affect the town and while most people would just be happy that they haven't been nuked, Jaime gets pissed and storms off.......... which while seems like a dick move, it's probably the best thing that could have happened to this story because we finally have Jaime getting all Blue Beetle-ed up and going after whoever is responsible for keeping them there.  

In the end, Jaime has a big fight with Stopwatch, as we learn that the doctor has been trying to recreate his time travel experiment, which originally blew up in his face and would have killed him if he didn't suddenly become able to manipulate time and stopped himself at the point before his death.  With that though, he keeps failing to save himself from blowing up each time he goes back and warns himself of his previous mistake, but now that Jaime's there it seems that Stopwatch wants to use him somehow to make his dreams of not dying.......... and I guess time traveling come true. 

That's it for this issue of Blue Beetle and yes, it continues to be a convoluted mess of a story, where our heroes barely do anything and in the end, I have no idea what our villain wants with Jaime at all because he doesn't even seem to think that the scarab armor is special in the slightest.  So yeah, no clue what this issue really did for the story besides for bore the hell out of me and make me think that Jaime is a dick for reacting the way he did about Brenda and Paco being a thing.  The art was decent enough, but overall, this is just another disappointing issue on the way to ending this series.

Bits and Pieces:

This last arc of the Blue Beetle series has been rough as hell and this issue doesn't do much to make it better.  Yeah, we finally get to see our villain and find out about what makes him a villain, but that's about all we get here, while making our hero look like an asshole.  Ultimately, the art is decent here, but the story is a mess and I don't see things getting better as it goes.

4/10