A Clockwork Blue
This cover has an interesting concept, but with a bad artist, we still have Blue Beetle cursed by terrible covers. I mean seriously, look at the shape of his freaking head! Who the hell draws heads that grotesquely deformed!?
Marcio Takara's art looks a lot less like Ig Guara's this issue than it did last issue. It's a lot lumpier, it lacks the elegant smoothness of Ig Guara. It's not really 'bad art,' but when compared to Ig Guara it comes out looking that way.
This series continues to explore it's Milestone undertones as Jaime Reyes ends up in a shelter for Runaways. This issue essentially lays the framework for A LOT of what's to come. Jaime might be in the shelter to follow up on the lead to Stopwatch, but what he finds there is so much more. He sees just how widespread the notion of him as a villain truly is, and he interacts with other runaways. He doesn't get around to a lot of development on this end, but you can see that it effects him deep down. He misses his home, but his reasons for running away are more valid.
And while he feels bad about what happened back in El Paso, he hasn't had the chance to learn how to be a superhero properly, something he's all too aware of. He came to New York partly to 'find himself' by finding a more experienced hero to help show him the ropes. This whole idea helps improve the sense of what the DC Universe is like. There's so many heroes that if you end up with powers you aren't totally alone. You know these people are out there, so can try and seek them out. But unfortunately, Jaime hasn't found that yet, but he still has a hero's heart. Unfortunately that makes him a bit too impulsive. He ends up making things much worse for himself with a series of unfortunate events. His lack of experience causes him to act too quickly. Stopwatch is certainly a killer, but he's deluded himself into thinking he isn't, due to the fact that if he can fix his own problems, he'll be able to fix the others because he'll be rewinding time. Most other heroes would've taken a second to figure things out, but Jaime's on edge, he reacts on instinct and messes things up, in an interesting way. Plus it leads into a major event to increase his notoriety. Plus something happens that might be leading into his loved ones following him to New York. As I said, this issue really sets up a lot for this series.
And one of my big complaints about the previous issue is resolved surprisingly quickly. Last issue seemed to crowd up the series with too many new in-focus subplots right after letting some major ones settle more into the looming sense instead of direct threat. But things tie together nicely here, and the direction is much smoother.
In Conclusion: 4/5
I don't know if it's just Marcio Takara's art, but these past two issues have been harder for me to enjoy. I'm still enjoying them, but they're not blowing me away the same as the earlier issues. I hope Ig Guara returns soon, and I hope we get a decent cover artist soon.