The most twisted villain the Justice League has ever faced is gathering an army, and infecting superheroes with evil. So fans can say goodbye to Jaime Reyes, known as the teenage hero Blue Beetle… and say hello to Scarab.

Like all the other infected DC heroes, Jaime is getting a one-shot of his own this November. He may seem like something less than a heavyweight compared to the rest of The Batman Who Laughs’s army, but even if the die-hard fans know his worth, just as many were more excited about a Booster Gold cameo than Blue Beetle’s own movie. There’s no denying Jaime Reyes is one of DC’s most underrated young heroes. And in The Infected: Scarab #1, the Dark Multiverse’s worst nightmare is using that fact to turn him into an unparalleled weapon.

We spoke with Batman/Superman writer Josh Williamson about Jaime’s recruitment by The Batman Who Laughs specifically, and while readers have seen Shazam corrupted into an evil form, the reason why Jaime is targeted is all his own:

The day of seeing Jaime Reyes as “just a kid” are definitely over, now that the preview images show how twisted a nightmare the birth of Scarab will be. Read on below for the preview pages, and the plot synopsis for The Infected: Scarab #1 below:

If you’re The Batman Who Laughs, if you want to create an army that’s going to go up against not just the heroes of the DCU, but also the villains–who do you get? The answer’s obvious: Superman. That’s the first one you go after. So why wouldn’t he? Why wouldn’t that be the first person he would go after?

He goes and he gets Shazam and some of the others first, but it’s all strategic. Every character was picked for strategic reasons. So with Blue Beetle, with Jaime, he picked him because he knew people would underestimate him. He knew that people don’t realize how powerful Blue Beetle is, and how great a hero he is. So he thinks, ‘If I can get him, they’re going to underestimate him. They’re just going to see him as some kid.’

  • The Infected: Scarab #1 Release date: November 20th, 2019 Written by: Dennis Hopeless Hallum Art by: Freddie E. Williams II, Jeremy Colwell Cover by: David Marquez, Dean White Metamorphosis! The spread of The Infected continues! After a chance encounter with a powerful mystical entity known as The Scarab, teenager Jaime Reyes was transformed into a reluctant warrior for good—the Blue Beetle! Jaime never asked to be the Blue Beetle, but he’s been doing his best to live up to the power within. Now, the Batman Who Laughs, the most sinister evil this or any other world has ever seen, has his sights set on turning Jaime toward the darkness, awakening the evil within and bringing out the terrible Scarab in The Infected: Scarab by Dennis Hopeless Hallum and Freddie E. Williams II, the latest in a series of stories spotlighting DC’s corrupted heroes. Spinning out of the events of Batman/Superman and “Year of the Villain” comes the tale of a hero fighting the evil inside, and whose friends and family are about to pay the price…and it all begins by hijacking the Bug!

The Infected: Scarab #1 will be available at your local comic book shop on November 20th, 2019.

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