Ted "The Blue Beetle" Kord:
'The Azure Avenger'

"(singing) Come on baby, heroes like you and I... Bay-bee we were born to bug!"- Blue Beetle

Supposing someone asked you to become a super-hero, what would you do? Laugh at them? Say "I wish", then ignore them? In short, wouldn't you respond by doing nothing at all?

Well, when Ted Kord was asked, he said yes, and did it too. Ted was an inventor and founder of Kord, Inc., a high-tech business. (This was back in the '60s, when high-tech busines still seemed like a good idea.) When his evil uncle Jarvis ran amok with some giant robots on Pago Island, Ted enlisted the help of his old college professor to help him save the day. Well, you would. The professor in question was Dan Garrett, who also happened to be the super-hero known as the Blue Beetle. Jarvis was defeated, the world was saved, but Garrett died. His dying wish was for Ted to take on the mantle of the Blue Beetle. Unfortunately, the magical scarab which gave Dan Garrett his powers was lost in the conflict, so Ted was left with task of making himself into a super-hero without it's help.

Fortunately, our friend Ted was no slouch in the mad science department. He built a vast number of crime fighting gadgets. The most impressive of these were the Bug, his beetle-shaped flying car (Batmobile, eat your heart our); and the BB Gun, which fired concussive blasts of compressed air and also had a flash attachment. Pretty sweet, eh?