Blue Beetle: Who is Conrad Carapax?

DC's upcoming Blue Beetle movie has just received a new trailer that digs deeper into the powers of Jaime Reyes and his scarab. The trailer also offers a longer look at the film's villain Conrad Carapax (played by Raoul Max Trujillo), who wears an armored suit that looks remarkably like his original comic book incarnation, seen here: 

Though Carapax isn't as well known a DC villain as the Joker or Lex Luthor, he's got a long comic history with Blue Beetle that ties into the legacy of Jaime Reyes' Blue Beetle predecessors, Dan Garrett and Ted Kord.

In comics, Carapax was originally a human archaeologist who was a professional rival of Dan Garrett, the original Blue Beetle, who initially found the scarab that would eventually bond with Jaime Reyes. 

Introduced in 1986's Blue Beetle #1 by writer Len Wein and artist Paris Cullins, Carapax became Ted Kord's first nemesis in the DC Universe. Carapax's origin was played out over numerous issues of the Blue Beetle title.

Shortly after Garrett died and passed the scarab down to Ted Kord, Carapax discovered one of Garrett's hidden laboratories, in which Garrett and Ted's uncle Jarvis Kord were working on an indestructible robot, which Jarvis secretly planned to replicate into an army of invincible soldiers at his command.

When Carapax touched the robot, it electrocuted him, killing his human body - but with the added effect of transferring his consciousness into the robot itself. In his new nigh-invulnerable, super strong robot body, Carapax became an 'Indestructible Man,' finally squaring off with Ted Kord for the first of several times in Blue Beetle #15.

Elements of both Ted Kord and Dan Garrett's histories as Blue Beetle are on display in the Blue Beetle trailer, including Ted Kord's Bug-Ship, and both Garrett and Kord's classic suits, translated basically straight from comics to the screen.

Does that mean that Conrad Carapax will have similar historical ties to Ted Kord and Dan Garrett in the Blue Beetle movie? The fact that Susan Sarandon's Victoria Kord is apparently the film's other big villain seems to indicate that the comic book story will be adapted at least somewhat. 

And that leads to the other big question - will Conrad Carapax's human consciousness be uploaded into a robot body, or some other kind of monstrous form? 

From what's shown in the trailer, he definitely undergoes some kind of process to become an armored villain - and it looks pretty painful.

We'll find out the details when Blue Beetle releases in theaters in August.

Learn the comic book history of the Blue Beetle.