The Blue Beetle fights the Parasite in the June issue of Blue

A battle scene featured on the cover of Lawrence resident Jai Nitz's new Spanish-language comic book.

Jai Nitz

Bam! Boom! Pow!

The lexicon of comic book onomatopoeia is universal. But for the month of June, the “Blue Beetle” comic book is keeping the Bam! Boom! and Pow! and adding in a dash of something not seen often: a mainstream script almost entirely in Spanish.

The special issue, the first Spanish-only project released by comics giant DC, was written and translated by Lawrence resident Jai Nitz, and it has been a hit with the teen followers of the comic book, which has a rare Hispanic hero, Jaime Reyes.

The comic is normally written by John Rogers, the writer behind the blockbuster “Transformers,” but for the special edition, the folks at DC tapped Nitz, who freelances six to 12 comics a year for DC and the other comic giant, Marvel.

“I pitch a few innings for the Yankees now and then,” he says of the jobs writing for the big boys, which he does on top of his day gig of working at a Kansas City payroll company.

Blue Beetle background

To create a situation in which it would make sense for the normally English-speaking Reyes to speak Spanish, Nitz says he drew upon his own life. Nitz is half-Hispanic and says that until he took Spanish classes in high school he had a hard time interacting with his mother’s Spanish-speaking family in Texas. Now, he can speak it but remembers well the feeling of not being able to communicate.

“I couldn’t, like, give a dissertation in Spanish and I wouldn’t want to go and brief the U.N. on something,” he says of his current Spanish skills. “I can get by when I’m in south Texas with my family. I can say what I want. I can understand what they want.”

The extended family scenario fit perfectly with Reyes’ character profile. The third Blue Beetle since the comic’s inception in 1939, Reyes became the masked man when the former Blue Beetle’s scarab fused with his spine in 2006. He’s unusual in not only that he’s a Hispanic teen living in un-Gotham-like El Paso, Texas, but also that he hasn’t hidden his superhero identity from his family and loved ones. He’s very open and connected to his family, who are present in the comic, which is aimed at young teens. Because of this, the idea of Jaime going to a Spanish-speaking family reunion worked well with the series’ arc and was something that wasn’t too far-fetched.

“It makes complete sense coming from the perspective of an English speaker looking in on another language, and that’s what I like about it,” says Mike Norton, the illustrator who worked with Nitz on the issue. “Sometimes special books like this can come off as a novelty, but this had a reason for being. Other than that, it’s a very tight story as well.”

Nitz was familiar with the comic and knew his idea would make sense, but he wasn’t an avid reader – at 32, he’s not in the age range. But that had never hurt him before. His big break writing scripts for comics came when he began freelance work on “The Batman Strikes!” series, which is a series in the Batman franchise that is meant for youngsters.

The issue

Nitz was offered the job to write the special issue after he made a pitch for his own comic book, “El Diablo,” which should hit stands in September.

Norton says that he jumped at the chance to work on the special Spanish version of the comic, despite the fact that he doesn’t speak the language.

“When I was told it was going to be a special like that, I was very happy to be a part of it. Seemed like a really cool idea,” Norton says. “Of course, technically it wasn’t much different, because the script I get is still in English anyway.”

That original English script is in the back of the book, which can help Blue Beetle’s English-speaking fans understand what’s going on in the book, which has very few panels in English. Nitz says that he wrote the script in English and then translated it himself into Spanish for the final product.

An identifiable hero

Nitz says he never would have thought he’d be a part of something like this – mainly because there were virtually no Hispanic characters for him to look up to as a kid.

“Growing up, there just weren’t that many Hispanic characters, period. The one that I remember the best was a character called El Dorado on ‘Super Friends,'” he says. “They added this Mexican guy who would say ‘amigos’ all the time and stuff like that. Terrible. Horrible stuff. He’s the guy I remember most, and I’m like, ‘Really, that’s what I get to hang my hat on as a Hispanic is this guy?’ Come on.”

Nitz says that he hopes that Spanish-speaking or not that Hispanic kids can find hope in Jaime Reyes.

“Hopefully, somewhere, there’s some kid who is like, ‘I like this because it’s about me.’ Because even if you’re a Hispanic kid in Philadelphia and live in an urban center that has never seen the deserts of El Paso, (he can say) it’s still about me,” Nitz says. “I hope that that’s happening somewhere.”