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As it may be noted, I am, indeed angry and most likely blood (blood!) will be shed (tho' most likely it'll just be mine ... sigh ...). Anyhow. What this site actually is is an attempt at collecting EVERY reference to Ted Kord, Blue Beetle (II) currently online. Really. No, really. Okay, you can stop laughing now. Please. And, each section listed on the left-hand side of the page takes you to the juicy goodness of that section, which would be as follows:
(if you like reading really goony interview with Keith Giffen and J.M. DeMatteis, this is the area for you)
In the long run, I'll probably also add areas for pics and multimedia and a list o' thanks and acknowledgements to those who've sent me links. (and I'll take this moment right now to thank Cat for providing a lotta nice links to art and fan-fics which are slowly going up on the site! You can check out her Live Journal here!) And if you've got a great link, or a great anything about Beetle, please feel free to share the love! You can e-mail me at saving_ted@yahoo.com. Thanks for checking me out (AND visiting this site!). Sign the guestbook, enjoy the links, think about what ought to be and what isn't, and be groovy.
~ gren
Sort of. (I mean, he's a comic book character, so he was never actually there to begin with) If you're reading this, you probably know who I'm talking about. If you don't, then the "Ted" I'm referring to is Theodore "Ted" Kord, Blue Beetle (II), a comic book character currently owned by DC Comics. If you're reading this, you might have some of the same feelings I do about what went down this past summer and what's currently going on in the DC Universe, none of which are exactly pleasant. Or you might be thinking I'm a nut job to be dwelling so much on one little character someone cared about fourteen or so years ago. Well, you'd be right. I am a nut job. And obsessive. And I can't leave some things well enough alone until I've dissected every last bit of information available to me and then did something about it. Hence this website. Y'know, now that I think of it, if you're reading this website, you're probably just me ... But what the hey ... Blue Beetle (II), Ted Kord, was my favorite comic book character. Ever. I didn't much appreciate the fact he was killed. I didn't much appreciate how he was killed. I didn't much appreciate why he had to be killed. None of those things filled my life with light and joy. As a matter of fact, they made me feel bitter and old (well, older and more bitter than I usually feel . . . ). I didn't much appreciate that, either. So, like any other blue-blooded American fanboy, I went online and bitched and moaned on the boards and had a lot of sound and fury and really, it didn't mean anything. The DCU PTB have spoken: Blue Beetle is dead. Well, the hell with that. Ted Kord may never appear in another DC comic book, but that doesn't mean he's just gone. As long as there's life, there's hope, right? Well, when there isn't (or never was)life, at least there's memory, and that's worth saving. That, to me, is the very least I can do to make sure this character that I loved (and I know who a bunch of people out there loved, too) is kept alive. The two writers most associated with Blue Beetle, Keith Giffen and J.M. DeMatteis didn't quite agree with the treatment given Beetle. As they put it (and I paraphrase) killing him isn't what they would have done. In the long run, that's the only mature reaction they can have. For me, the only reaction I can have is: what can I do about what was done. And for right now, all I can think of is this: creating a site which collects everything I can find online about Blue Beetle. Its gonna take some time (right now, I'm supposed to be concentrating on producing a one-act play festival AND editing a documentary and I'll get to them. Really), but it'll get there. Under each category on the left-hand side you'll find links to, well, what the categories about. And if you want to send me a link, I'd be more than grateful to ya (and the e-mail here is: saving_ted@yahoo.com. Heck, if you've made it down this far, I'm already grateful to ya!
So I'm gonna try and save Ted, one site at a time. Feel free to join me. Feel free to shake your head in dismay. Feel free to let the PTB at DC know that they may want to blue out Mr. Kord from the DCU, but the merchandise will NOT be silent. Hell, no.
I'm not going to explain this very well. Might as well get that out of the way first. I feel a little too much about this character and what's happened to him. I'm a little too emotional about all of this, and when I get emotional, my ability to explain myself takes a HUGE dive (well, not that I'm all that good at explaining myself, period). If you want to skip all the build-up and pseudo-logic and get the point, just click here. I guess you've already guessed that I really love this character. And I suppose I could go on about how real he is, how you don't love him because of what he can do, but because of who he is. And, do trust me on this, I could REALLY go on about how they did him (and every other character) wrong in Countdown to Infinite Crisis. But those really aren't the reasons why I've made this website. Do you remember the first time you heard about Superman? Or Batman? Or Wonder Woman? (No, I haven't gone off topic here or completely changed the subject. Just stick with me) Twenty-to-one, the first time you heard about them was NOT in a comic book. Twenty-to-one, you got your first taste of the DCU from television. Or a movie. Or your underwear. Or any of the other billion cross-marketing wonders bearing the likeness of the Big Three. But, okay, they're the Big Three: of course they're everywhere. So let's try, Green Lantern. Or Aquaman. Or the Flash. Again, we got them on the telly and the undewear and (if some of you remember them), the Super Friends kid books. Let's go "down" one more level: Rocket Red #4. Crimson Fox. Ice. Blue Beetle. The only place you got those guys: in the comic books. The only place they had a life: on paper, in your hands. You could never get that Captain Atom suit you wanted for Halloween, but man! were there Superman capes a'plenty. Do you remember when Superman died? (again, not off topic! I'm getting to the point! really!) Media had a field day: "oh no! Superman's dead! That's like killing Mickey Mouse!" Oh, if we were only so lucky. Funny thing about that was, well, we all knew he was coming back. He's Superman, for crying out loud! You can't kill Superman! He's got so much merchandise, there's no way you could ever kill him! And, of course, old Supes, well: HE GOT BETTER. And even if he didn't get better, if he really was singing with the choir invisible, he still wouldn't be actually DEAD in the public eye. Again: too much merchandise. Now, do you remember when Ice died? (yes, Mark Waid's big mistake ...) How's about when both Crimson Foxes died? And poor Dimitri done in by the OMAC's? They ain't coming back, fanboy. None of them. And yeah, that does annoy me, but not so much because, lo and behold! who's that I see running around on Justice League Unlimited on Cartoon Network? It kinda looks like ... Ice. Crimson Fox. Rocket Red. And look! There's Blue Beetle right behind them . . . NOT. NOW I'll get to the point. In comics, you can kill a character in one panel and have him walking through the door in the next (and without that nasty bullet hole in the head!), 'cause hey! its comics. Or, if you do kill him dead, dead, dead, you can merchandise him out so no one ever forgets him: Barry Allen may be gone, but the Flash will always live one, right? Or you can stick him in a movie and he'll live on forever: Uncle Ben's alive! In Spiderman The Movie . . . As long as the character is SOMEWHERE, he's gonna be okay. But if he can't be anywhere, what the hell is he? He's Blue Beetle. You ever wonder why the (arguably) most popular character from the (again, arguably) most popular DC title of late 80's/early 90's DC has NEVER appeared on ANY animated DC show? Answer: he can't. HE FRIGGIN' CAN'T. For reasons I'm still vainly researching, it appears that some kind of broadcast rights for Blue Beetle are not completely in DC hands. So he can't appear on TV . . . until 2007. 2007 Now add this fact to that fact: The PTB of DC have made it clear, in no uncertain terms, that Ted Kord will not be coming back. So, what have we got now? No appearances on TV. Well, that's okay, 'cause we can still catch him in the comic bo- . . . oh yeah. WE CAN'T. Do you see what I'm getting at? By killing Blue Beetle, the DCU PTB have effectively placed the character in limbo. He's persona non grata, but with no place to return to. Right now, he can't exist anywhere because there's no place left for him to exist. (Oh irony of ironies for Keith Giffen, eh? He wrote a bug character of his own into DC limbo, and now a bug character he wrote for actually IS in DC limbo.) And that's what really pisses me off. Right now, creatively for the DCU, Ted Kord is really, truly dead. No one can touch him. No one can give him any kind of life. I don't know if those jerks in editorial realized it or not, but when they killed Ted Kord, THEY REALLY KILLED TED KORD. Bastards, bastards, bastards. But you really can't kill what's remembered, right?
I'd sure like to believe that. And that's what this is all about.
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e-mail: saving_ted@yahoo.com 12.14.05 |
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