No. He is not British and sound like a member of the Beetles band. (Go watch the 90’s Iron Man show, if you didn’t get that). Introduced in Strange Tales #123 (1964) by Stan Lee and Carl Burgos, Abner Jenkins was a disgruntled Aircraft engineer who was sick of being under looked for promotions and raises. He created the first Beetle armor and fought against the Human Torch and Thing, who he beat in his first encounter. He would later become one of Spider-Man’s rogue gallery, first encountering the webslinger when he kidnapped the Human Torch’s girlfriend. Serving under the Collector he would battle the Avengers as well as the Defenders. After he had the Thinkerer upgrade his armor, he joined the Masters, led by Egghead and later helped found the Sinister Syndicate. He would also be targeted by Iron Man during the Armor War.

After the Avengers and Fantastic Four were believed killed by Onslaught, Baron Zemo recruited Jenkins into his new Masters of Evil. Since they were pretending to be heroes as the team Thunderbolts, Jenkins redesigned and upgraded his suit into the Mobile Armored Cyber-Harness and took the heroic name of MACH-I. Like most of the members of the Thunderbolts, Jenkins grew to love being a hero and world betray Zemo and worked to become a true hero with the rest of the team. He would begin a relationship with Songbird and when Hawkeye took over the team, he would be convinced to serve a prison sentence for a murder he committed as the Beetle. In prison, he foiled a prison break and came under the control of the CSA, who made him help in a sting against Justin Hammer. He would be allowed to remain free after Hawkeye blackmail the CSA but had to hid his identity as Jenkins was supposed to be in prison.

The Thunderbolts were eventually force to stop being heroes in exchange for full pardons but eventually returned to help battle Graviton. With the exception of Songbird, the team were transported to Counter-Earth. They would eventually return to Earth and Jenkins would return to prison to serve the rest of his sentence. After being release, he help form a new team of the Thunderbolts, with Songbird as the leader. He began training the new Beetle team during the Civil War and would aid Songbird and Black Widow in trying to take down Norman Osborn’s Thunderbolts during the Dark Reign. He would become a prison warden for Luke Cage’s Thunderbolts as well as working as a parole officer. He began working at in the Pleasent Hill facility to forcefully reform villains and was later recruited into Winter Soldier’s Thunderbolt before being killed during a rampage by Kobik.

Jenkins has had a few figures over the years but many people don’t realize that he is the same person. Despite having 3 other versions of the Beetle identity made before him, including 2 female and an alternate universe version, none of them were of Jenkins. Instead it took until the MCU Vulture wave that he got his first official figure in his classic Beetle costume by Hasbro. Later, in a push to complete the original Thunderbolts team, he got a new MACH-I costume in the Avengers Gamerverse Abomination wave.

---

---