#they dont understand that shazam is what the average 10 year old thinks

[yellowocaballero]

hi please talk about jaime more i am equal parts afraid and excited for his new show

Jaime stan since 2009 reporting for duty sir.

Jaime is the best Spider-Man story we've had in a very long time. I'm including Spider-Man in this. In 2006 it was pretty abnormal to have such a simple story: about a normal kid, who is a very good kid and just wants to do his best, accidentally getting in way over his head and deciding to make the best of a bad situation by helping people and trying to keep his head above water. Jaime's life dream is to become a dentist. His family is highly engaged in his superhero life. Jaime was wholesome without feeling wholesome, and a really exceptional guy while still feeling like an average teen.

Jaime actually did Into The Spider-Verse before ITSV did ITSV: it told a Spider-Man story about a kid struggling to live up to a legacy. About living up to a dead legend, trying to puzzle out his life and make him proud, and how to engage with his life and message. Except I think it did something even more interesting than what ITSV did with Miles.

Because the legacy was that of a loser.

Ted Kord's a joke. Out of universe, he was placed in joke comic after joke comic (Justice League International was exceptional and prided itself on being 100% loser). In universe, nobody took him seriously. How can you take a member of the JLI seriously? The superhero community knew Ted was competent, but they didn't really admire him and they didn't actually like him. He was another annoying supergenius without any superpowers. He never even got the scarab to work. What was Ted Kord's legacy, what legacy was Jaime trying to live up to?

Well, people loved Ted. That's all.

Ted had somebody who, if JLI had been written in 2023 instead of 1980, would have been his husband. He had his husband's family. He had the Justice League International, a misfit team of losers who were losers together. He was insanely smart and very kind and super weird. He had absolutely zero reason to be a hero whatsoever, but he was a bit of an adrenaline junkie and was too weird to live and too rare to die.

What kind of legacy is that? How do you live up to that? Jaime is the kind of superhero who would rather live up to the legacy of a kind man who is loved than a famous man who is revered. The people who loved Ted feature prominently in Jaime's own comic, and the JLI revival where they met Jaime was super emotional. And the Booster Gold comic where he met Jaime made me cry. Jaime's scarab is built to be an ultra death kill murder machine, and Jaime's job is to make it kind. Jaime wanted to leave a legacy of kindness too, and that was how he discovered what kind of Blue Beetle he wanted to be. He never once gave a shit about the rest of it. His life dream is to be a dentist.

Jaime's story has a lot of lasting appeal, because I think he's the kind of hero who fits in with the sensibilities of people today: just a swell lad. But I'm also a Ted Kord fan, and I always really loved the respect and reverence that Jaime always gave Ted: not as somebody who only knew him theoretically or knew the idea of him, but as somebody who was so loved, that he people who loved him showed up at Jaime's door to help him too.

Anyway Jaime's story is SO BASIC that the movie's good/bad is going to hinge entirely 100% of execution so it's impossible to tell right now, I'm holding out judgment. I'm guessing banal and forgettable. Hopefully charming, like Shazam. I am a massive fucking Shazam stan he is the funniest character on God's green earth.