Bumblebee (comics)
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Bumblebee is the superhero alias of Karen Beecher, a fictional character in the DC Comics universe. She is a former member of the superhero team Teen Titans and a current member of the superhero team the Doom Patrol.
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[edit] Character history
[edit] Teen Titans
Scientist Karen Beecher was the girlfriend of Mal Duncan (a.k.a. the superhero Herald). In order to help make Herald look good in front of the team, Beecher secretly made herself a bumblebee-themed supersuit and attacked the Teen Titans. She escaped without this ruse being revealed.
When she later explained to Mal and the Titans what she had done, they were impressed enough to offer her membership, which she accepted. She and Mal subsequently moved to the new Titans West team, having relocated to San Francisco. When the Titans team dissolved for a time, Karen and Mal married and 'retired' from superheroics. Karen took a job with S.T.A.R. Labs, where she designs non-lethal weaponry.
They have returned to crime-fighting from time to time to assist the team, most notably during a short-lived revival of Titans West and the JLA/Titans event, which reunited everyone involved with the team. Following this, Mal and Karen briefly joined the latest incarnation of Titans West (now called Titans L.A.), but this incarnation of the team never really formed.
[edit] Inifinite Crisis and One Year Later
Bumblebee and her husband are among the heroes recruited by Donna Troy to help avert a coming crisis that threatened the existence of the universe. After a battle in space, most of the heroes were trapped by a Zeta Beam Ray that Adam Strange was hoping to use for teleporting away the heroes from the rift in space. Due to the ray interactions with the rift itself, the Zeta Ray altered Bumblebee's physiology, apparently transferring her body mass to Hawkgirl. This left Bumblebee approximately six inches in height and Hawkgirl some 25 feet tall.
In Teen Titans vol. 3, #34, Bumblebee is shown to have joined the Doom Patrol sometime in the past year along with her husband (now known as Vox) and Beast Boy. She must now take medicine developed by Doom Patrol leader Niles Caulder to prevent her heart from going into cardiac arrest, due to her tiny form.
Much like Garfield, she now strongly resembles her animated counterpart in costume and hair style.
Per Birds of Prey #100, Karen--along with numerous other DCU heroines--has been contacted by Barbara Gordon and asked to join the expanded roster of the latter's team, the Birds of Prey. Whether she accepted or not is unknown, but Oracle's letter did note that membership in the new Birds of Prey would not affect membership in another team, so her current position in the Doom Patrol is safe for now.
[edit] Powers and abilities
Bumblebee has no true superpowers and her abilities are derived from her scientific super-suit. The suit enhances her strength, acts as body armor and allows her to fly and create painful sonic blasts. She is currently stuck at a shrunken size.
[edit] In other media
Bumblebee appears in the Teen Titans animated series, voiced by T'Keyah Keymah. As an assertive, highly skilled, and cocky former H.I.V.E. student, who was really an undercover agent, who, for Aqualad, had enrolled to infiltrate the facility and learn of their motives and secrets. She had been keeping track of H.I.V.E long before Cyborg posed as Stone. Bumblebee was able to resist Brother Blood's mind control powers eventually the first time. "There's not a man alive who can tell me what to do!" she explained to Cyborg. Her abilities as a H.I.V.E. student entrusted her to Brother Blood, but Blood was shocked to find that she was also a spy when she assisted Cyborg in stopping Brother Blood's latest plan.
Blood escaped to Steel City where he was followed by Bumblebee and Aqualad. While in Steel City, Bumblebee and Aqualad formed Titans East with Speedy and Más y Menos. Cyborg soon followed and helped the team build their tower, but Blood entered with his new Cyborg copies and beat the Titans East whom he then placed under mind-control to attack and capture Cyborg, whom Blood wanted to examine. Cyborg then battled Blood and won, freeing the Titans East. He then decided to return to Titans West and appointed Bumblebee as the new leader of Titans East.
Also, along with her fellow Titans East members, she watched over Titans Tower in Jump City, defeating Andre Le Blanc without trouble. While fighting Control Freak, she was forced to stop a subway car while remaining in her small stature.
Bumblebee was overpowered by Punk Rocket and Angel in "Calling All Titans". She somehow got rescued by Starfire and joined the Titans' assault on the Brotherhood of Evil's lair.
The animated Bumblebee is able to shrink to tiny size and fire electric blasts from a pair of hand-held weapons, as well as fly like Marvel Comics' Wasp.
Bumblebee has made a few appearances in the Teen Titans Go! comic book series (#20, 25, & 29).
