Ted Kord is the second person to become the Blue Beetle. He is a genius level inventor, skilled hand to hand combatant and superior athlete. Edit

Blue Beetle first appears at Charlton Comics

The Charlton Years
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Ted Kord started out as a brilliant inventor who worked in his lab located in . Ted’s lab assistant, Tracey, was also his romantic interest. Ted would constantly be visited by a detective named Fisher, who was investigating the disappearance of Dan Garrett (the first Blue Beetle). It appeared that Ted was last person seen with the missing Garrett on . Tracey ventured out to alone hoping to clear Ted of any wrong doing. Ted found her there and decided to share with her his origin as the Blue Beetle.

 

Ted’s road to becoming the new Blue Beetle started by him assisting his Uncle Jarvis.  Ted’s experiments helped his uncle through roadblocks on a secret project that Ted was kept in the dark about. An unexpected explosion in his uncle’s lab seemly kills Uncle Jarvis. Ted finds a small box in the lab’s wreckage containing a map of and a reel of film. The film reveals that his uncle’s secret project was in fact a collection of evil experiments to create an army of super-androids. Ted turn to his college friend, Archeologist Dan Garrett, for help finding his Uncle Jarvis’ secret workshop on . 

 

Arriving on Pago Island Ted and Dan were immediately captured by his uncle’s advanced androids. They soon learned Jarvis was alive and planed to carry out his scheme for world conquest. Dan was forced into revealing his identity as the Blue Beetle to his friend Ted when Jarvis ordered his androids to kill them both. In the battle Jarvis causes an explosion resulting in his death and mortally wounding Dan as well. Knowing he’s was dying, Dan asked Ted to keep the secret and carry on in his place as the Blue Beetle. Feeling just as responsible as his uncle for what had transpired, Ted agrees to Dan’s request. Before anything else could be said a cave -in causes Ted to be permanently separated from Dan.  Dan is buried in the rubble along with magical scarab that gave him super-powers.

 

Having returned to Hub City , Ted Kord contemplated how best to fulfill his promise to Dan without the power of the magical scarab.  He resolves this by going through a rigorous physical training program to develop an athletic body. With his scientific know-how, Ted develops an arsenal of gadgets and constructs an aircraft, called “The Bug”, made from unfinished experiments left by his absent father. Thus, the new Blue Beetle is born.

 

As Ted finished his tale to Tracey they were both attacked by two of his uncle’s super-powered androids that had failed to be destroyed earlier. Ted manages to send the two androids down into a crevice and uses the “The bug” to drop rocks to permanently seal them below the surface. Ted would carry on as the Blue Beetle fighting such villains as the Mad Men, a cult called “The Men of the Mask”, and the Destroyer. The latter villain would team Ted up with another costume hero, The Question (Vic Sage).

 

DC: The Continuing Adventures

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Blue Beetle, along with other Charlton heroes acquired by DC, was introduced into the DC Universe by means of the Crisis on Infinite Earths maxi-series. In the epic adventure that destroyed DC’s Multiverse the Charlton characters were revealed to have existed on Earth-4. Their Earth along with Earth’s 1, 2, S and X were the only surviving Earths, which ended up converging into a singe “New” Earth. Ted played a major role in the Crisis and was one of the first heroes summoned by the Harbinger in the Monitor’s fight against the Anti-Monitor.

  

In the DCU Ted’s origin was slightly altered and more defined. His girlfriend and lab partner, Tracey, was not brought over from his Charlton days. In his youth it’s revealed that Ted first started working in the Research & Development dept. for his father’s business, KORD Industries. In addition, Ted’s college friend, Dan Garrett, was revealed to be one of his college professors.

 

In his solo adventures Ted would fight such villains as Firefist, the Mad Men, Dr. Alchemy, Chronos, The Hybrid, and Overthrow. Ted also faced the last android that laid in stasis on for years, which was dubbed Carapax. At one point Dan Garrett was revealed to be alive. When Dan crawls out of the rubble of imprisonment on , the spirit of Pharaoh Kha-eh-Re tells him to kill Ted Kord. Dan later resists Kha-eh-Re and discovers a possible alien connection to his magical scarab. In the end Dan dies once again and the scarab is destroyed.   

 

A Team Player

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Ted first joined the Justice League when it re-formed following the nationwide anti-hero brainwashing by Glorious Godfrey. He became an intricate part of the league for many years and fought such villains as Despero, Overlord, Eclipso and Dr. Destiny. One battle was particularly fatal for Ted as he helped fought Doomsday, which left him in a coma for a period. As Ted grew less active with the team and in general, he developed a weight problem. However, with the help of General Glory Ted was able to regain his athletic physique. Throughout his time with the League, Ted retained a strong friendship with Booster Gold. The two would be referred often as the “Blue and Gold”. When Ice apparently died at the hands of the Overlord, Ted and Booster Gold joined Captain Atom’s darker team called Extreme Justice.

 From there Ted and Captain Atom became a part of the group calledthe L.A.W. (Living Assault Weapons) in order to stop Judomaster’s sidekick, Tiger, now Avatar and his personal attacks on the warmongers of the world. At the end to this mission, Ted would take a hiatus from his identity as the Blue Beetle.

 

Ted would go on to meet Barbara Gordon (Oracle) as internet chat buddies. The two started out not knowing the others’ identity, but would eventually solve each others’ alter ego before finally meeting in person. In the course of their friendship the two became close, with Ted developing a strong crush on Barbara. Ted began working with Barbara, providing her with an aircraft for transportation, and also restarted his super-hero career. Not soon after, we learn Ted developed a heart condition, but he continued his heroics. At one point the scarab believed to be that of Dan Garrett, which Ted thought was destroyed, was actually discovered by Carter Hall (Hawkman) in a tomb in . Ted acquired the scarab, but couldn’t get it to work for him. During the course of Ted investigating what the origin of OMAC is, the scarab is activated by a flash of lightning and leads Ted to the wizard Shazam. There it remained for a short period until Shazam’s death by Eclipso (Jean Loring). This scarab would fall to Earth and make its way to and into the hands of Jaime Reyes.

 
The Death of Ted Kord

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As Ted began to rebuild his life he is told by Barbara that funds are being withdrawn from Kord Omniversal through Waynetech and put into various dummy corporations. She gives Ted a name of one of the projects the money has been going into….O.M.A.C. Ted sets out to discover the culprit behind the treachery. Ted tries to incorporate help from the rest of the hero community, but few take him seriously. He receives help from his long-time friend Booster Gold, who ends up in the hospital from a “bolt of lightning” meant for Ted. After fending off an attack by the Mad Men, Ted discovers a clue hidden in his shattered goggles.  He finds a transmitting device belonging to Booster’s long missing security robot Skeets. Ted painstakingly traces the signal from the device to a stronghold in the Swiss Alps.

 

Ted discovers the base belongs to Checkmate with computer files containing data on every super-human on Earth. He also discovered the O.M.A.C. project as a subfile under Bruce Wayne. Ted surmised that Maxwell Lord was behind it all just before he revealed himself to Ted. As the Black King, Maxwell schemed to use Checkmate and the O.M.A.C. project toensure that metahumans, including superheroes, will be kept under surveillance and controlled by humans. Maxwell offers Ted to join him or suffer the consequences, but Ted refuses and Maxwell murders him with a bullet to the head.

 

Ted Kord: Alive Again?________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 

Booster Gold is asked by Rip Hunter for his help to set the timeline right. Booster agrees, but with the stipulation that they go back in time and save Ted Kord. Hunter tries to dissuade him as he makes Booster witness Barbara Gordon’s crippling attack over and over again. As Booster was about to accept Ted’s unfortunate fate, a future Blue Beetle arrives with past Blue Beetle, Dan Garrett and current Blue Beetle Jaime Reyes. The future Beetle claims the saving of Ted Kord’s life is essential. Despite pleading by Rip Hunter, Booster and the three Beetles go back in time and save Ted before he was shot by Maxwell Lord. However, when Booster and Ted return to the future they discover Lord and his O.M.A.C.’s turned the Earth into a police state.

 

Booster and Ted encounter a version of Hawkman and Green Arrow leading a resistance team against Lord and a mind controlled Superman. Eventually the two would gather their past teammates of the Justice League International. During the battle the future Beetle is revealed to be Black Beetle, a future villain of Jaime Reyes. Also, Black Beetle reveals his own secret team called the Time Stealers, consisting of Per Degaton, Ultra-Humanite, Despero and Booster’s dad, John Carter (under the control of Mr. Mind). As Ted watched his fiends killed off one after another, he realizes the only way to set things right is to go back in time and die as he was suppose to. Black Beetle tries to prevent this and he and Ted disappear in a time sphere. Booster Gold believes things have been set right again, but a shadowy figure turns up at a Kord Industries warehouse holding a glowing scarab and laughing like Ted Kord.

 

Skills and Abilities

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Ted Kord possesses genius-level intelligence with an IQ of 192. Having no super-human powers, Ted trained to become an Olympic level acrobat with impressive hand-to-hand combat skills. He also attained a high degree of skill in espionage and martial arts, proficient in Karate and Aikido.

 

Equipment

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Ted’s costume is made up a metal-mesh fabric with cybernetic circuitry impeded in his gloves that operate functions in his cowl and his high tech aircraft called “The Bug”. Ted’s cowl has a locking mechanism that can only be unlock by the touch of a chip in his gloves.  

 

The BB gun is a non-lethal hand held weapon. It’s designed to create a blinding flash of light or a high compressed air blast capable of felling a charging rhino. 

 

Ted’s aircraft, The Bug, carries a vast amount of high tech equipment and is capable of high speeds. It can electrify or magnetize its hull and possesses air tight capability that allows it to submerge in water or hover in orbit. The Bug can be summoned by remote control through the circuitry in Ted’s gloves and drop a sky-wire down for him to hang by or reel himself up. Ted has gone through various models of The Bug over the years.