What I know: There’s a magical beetle that gives you magical alien tech beetle powers if you believe in magic and nothing at all if you’re Ted Kord.

Also, the helmet FORMS TO YOUR FACE.

Ted Kord had his run, several adventures and did a lot of good, but it was time to hang up the beetle. He had a family, a child on the way, and more than saving the world, he wanted to be with his son. If he was ever needed again, he could always put the armor back on. The beetle, while it was what inspired him with it’s strange technology he reverse engineered into his alter ego, the Blue Beetle, had always just been an ornament.

In his lab, there was a smart kid from the high school, working there part time. His father had been a part of the lab before his untimely death and Jaime had continued to work there regardless, though he was not interested the work they had him do. Jaime would much rather be out there, having fun with his friends and enjoying the life of a teenager, but his family needed the money now that his father was gone and he was a good kid, willing to pitch in.

Still, Jaime wasn’t prepared for one late night. He came back late one night, having forgotten him backpack and homework at the lab. The cleaning staff let him in and he had just gotten to the office when he heard the commotion. Someone was breaking in right then. He wanted to do something, but he was a 16 year old kid and would be no match against the gunfire that he heard outside. So instead, he found somewhere to hide, pulled along by a strange feeling in the back of his mind that he attributed to instincts. What he found instead was Mr. Kord’s beetle and the harsh yellings of the robbers, demanding to know where something that sounded like “Beetle” was.

Jaime, deciding that he would do what he could to help, took the beetle to hide it, but instead found something rather strange happen. He was suddenly covered in a strange armor from nowhere and there was a voice in his head telling him to calm the hell down and just follow his lead. The robbers had just burst into the room he was in and, panicked, he did what the voice said and took them all down. When it went in for the kill, however, Jaime refused and got the both of them out of there. Scared and confused, though slowly figuring out that this was the effect of Ted Kord’s beetle, he went to the man’s house.

Ted Kord, awoken in the middle of the night by Jaime, took it all surprisingly well and fell into a flurry of babble, amazed that the beetle had this capability while the beetle took over the speech capacities for a moment to tell Ted that he was an incompetent user. Eventually, Jaime managed to, with Ted’s help, get the beetle to retract, though he was unwilling to fully release a suitable host at last.

Word spread of the return of Blue Beetle and Jaime opted to take on the role rather than deny it, sure that he could keep the alien techno-beetle under control and get out some of his restless energy he had at the office. Besides, he now had a mentor in Ted Kord who could give him a hand if he ran into anything big and he’d have a chance to meet heroes if he were one himself.