Throughout its publication, the series has had three main characters who have each assumed the mantle of the Blue Beetle: Dan Garret, Ted Kord and Jaime Reyes.

[1] It starred the original Blue Beetle, Dan Garret, who had first appeared in Mystery Men Comics anthology comic book series: a rookie police officer, he wore a special bulletproof costume and took "Vitamin 2X" which endowed him with super-energy, and he was assisted by a neighborhood pharmacist in his fight against crime.

[4][6] In 1964, Charlton Comics relaunched Blue Beetle with a new volume, written by Joe Gill with art by Bill Fraccio and Tony Tallarico.

This was another substantial reinvention of the Blue Beetle as a superhero, as Ted Kord had no superpowers and fought crime using advanced technology he had invented.

[10] The superhero character The Question debuted as the star of a backup feature in Blue Beetle, also written and drawn by Ditko.

They began publication of a new volume of Blue Beetle in June 1986, starring Ted Kord, with the character now fully integrated into the newly rebooted DC Universe.

The character of Ted Kord subsequently continued to appear as the Blue Beetle in other DC publications until his death in Countdown to Infinite Crisis (May 2005).

Jaime Reyes, the third Blue Beetle, was introduced in Infinite Crisis #3 (Feb. 2006): representing another major reinvention of the Blue Beetle as a superhero, Jaime Reyes was a teenager whose powers were derived from the scarab used by Dan Garrett, which was revealed as a piece of advanced alien technology.

A new ongoing Blue Beetle series began publication in March 2006, initially written by Keith Giffen and John Rogers,[20] with artist Cully Hamner.

[25] Editor Dan DiDio put the cancellation down to poor sales and said that Blue Beetle was "a book that we started with very high expectations, but it lost its audience along the way".

[27] As part of The New 52 publishing initiative, which rebooted the continuity of the DC Universe, a new volume of Blue Beetle began in September 2011, written by Tony Bedard and drawn by Ig Guara.

[35][36] As with the preceding miniseries, the ongoing series is written by Josh Trujillo and illustrated by Adrián Gutiérrez, and starring Jaime Reyes.