Death in superhero comics has lost a lot of the meaning it once had. Back in the days of Jason Todd and Bucky Barnes’s deaths, these were meant to be permanent status quo changes. However, these two became the prime example of breaking that trend, with Jason being revived and Bucky never having died at all. Death has become a bit of a revolving door in comics, to the point where it’s increasingly rare for a popular character’s demise to stick for more than a few years. I’m still surprised that Alfred has stayed dead for seven years. Of course, this isn’t to say that death can’t still be impactful.
It’s rarer and harder for death to stick, but characters meeting their ends still have a whole lot of narrartive power. Death can stick in people’s minds by being incredibly emotionally evocative, shocking, or downright brutal. Today, we’re talking about one death that covers all of those categories. Twenty-one years today, DC’s longest-running Blue Beetle, Ted Kord, was murdered in the pages of Countdown to Infinite Crisis #1. This death is still talked about to this day, even though Ted has long since returned to the land of the living. It’s one of the most shocking deaths in comics, and it all started with a betrayal like no other.
Blue Beetle, Broke and Alone
Everything started going wrong for Ted at once. Without warning, he discovered that someone had stolen his entire fortune, leaving him bankrupt. Then, villains stole one hundred pounds of Kryptonite that his company was looking after, beating him senseless in the process. Ted tried to get help from the other heroes, but countless crises were occurring across the universe. Batman still didn’t trust other heroes after Identity Crisis, and the Rann-Thanagar war broke out, demanding most heroes’ attention.
Booster Gold was the only person who prioritized Blue Beetle, and he was put in the hospital by an explosion meant for Ted. Blue Beetle decided to track the mastermind down himself. The clues led him to the Checkmate headquarters in the Swiss Alps. He snuck inside, and discovered files on every single superhero, including their weaknesses and true identities. His own file was marked as deceased. Ted was captured by O.M.A.C.s and brought to Checkmate’s new Black King, the longtime Justice League ally, Maxwell Lord.
Lord revealed that he took over Checkmate and Brother Eye to destroy the world’s metahumans, seeing them as an abomination. He’d been playing everyone for years, just waiting for the chance to take them all down. Still, he legitimately liked Ted, so he offered his former friend a chance to switch to the “winning side.” Ted refused, and Lord shot him in the head. Blue Beetle died alone, broken, and betrayed by one of his closest friends. Worst, is that nobody even knew until it was too late.
A Death That Came Out of Nowhere, But Was Felt Everywhere
The reason that Blue Beetle’s death stuck in the public consciousness when so many others fail to leave any impact is because of just how out of left field it was. Up to this point, Ted was looked at as mostly comic relief. Sure, he had a brief period in the ‘90s where he went super hardcore, but so did everyone else. For the most part, Ted was half of DC’s best comedy duo, Blue and Gold. He was never an A-lister, but he was important to every major hero. They all knew him and were friends with him on some level, and Ted was someone everyone could count on. He was even close to Oracle, who, by that point, was the connective tissue of the hero community.
Ted Kord was a truly lighthearted character, practically a remnant of the Silver Age optimism and virtuous heroism. This death, in comparison, was dark and brutal like few in DC are, made even worse by the fact that it was a betrayal by a close friend. It also kick-started a mystery that would lead to one of the most infamous moments of the last twenty-one years, with Wonder Woman snapping Lord’s neck. This was the biggest step towards the nuclear fallout of Infinite Crisis, and given how beloved that event still is, it only makes sense that the murder that set the tone would be remembered so intimately.
Blue Beetle’s death was one of the worst in comics, but which death do you think was the most brutal?