YELLOWJACKET REBORN is pretty new. In fact, The pic in the upper right corner is the only panel that we've seen so far. But this is what I know so far. YELLOWJACKET REBORN features Kirby King, a handyman who is skilled at robotics. He's the grandson of the Yellowjacket, who happens to be Charlton Comics' original superhero. And King will become a new superhero in the image of his grandfather.
But who is Yellowjacket? Wasn't he one of the Avengers?
In order to answer that question, we need to travel back in time to September 1944. That's when the original Yellowjacket made his superhero debut!
He didn't start out as a superhero. He started out as Vince Harley, a crime-fiction writer who struggled to write convincing crime-fiction. His editor encouraged him to get into the criminal mind. So Harley took a two-week stay-cation -- just in time for a mystery woman and a gang of villains to break into his house!
The woman's name was Judy Graves. She was out of her mind in panic and passed out on Harley's couch. He began digging around in her purse and found a necklace. Which seemed really suspicious at the time. Because why would a young woman carry around a necklace in her purse, right?
Harley was suspicious enough to call the police, but not before taking a nap in his living room. He woke to a room full of thugs, who demanded that he hand over the girl and the necklace. Unfortunately for him, both had disappeared from the room while he'd napped. So the thugs beat him unconscious and dumped a hive of yellow jackets on him, with the idea that the bees would sting him to death.
And yes I realize that yellow jackets aren't actually bees. And that people don't raise them in commercial hives. Or harvest their honey. But this was the 1940s... The time of food rationing. People made allowances for such things. Or something like that...
Anyway, it turned out that Judy was just hiding in the closet with the necklace and it also turned out that Vince Harvey isn't your average guy. He's one of those rare guys that bees won't thing -- or wasps for that matter! He comes up with a plan. First, he sent Judy off to the police to report that she was holding stolen jewelry. He then gained some inspiration from his yellow jackets and came up with the rest of his plan.
He dug out a giant yellow jacket costume from somewhere and attacked the thugs at their apartment. And he gained the ability to fly somehow. Seriously, that was his plan.
And final shot was pretty sweet! Check this out!
After this, Vince Harley regained his inspiration and managed to sell a story -- with promises of future adventures featuring the Yellowjacket! And those adventures continued to happen for some nearly a year! YELLOWJACKET continued for 10 issues before disappearing.
But now we get to catch up with his legacy in this new YELLOWJACKET REBORN story line! And I'm really curious about this guy with his robotic bees -- or are they robotic wasps? Who knows? Not me! But I will next week when the next installment of YELLOWJACKET REBORN hits Pix-C Web Comics!
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