Originally Posted by
Dataweaver
I haven’t read most of the comments, so I may be retreading ground others have already covered. That said, my thoughts:
Overall impression: I loved it! I’ve mostly sworn off of DC because of the mess they made with Heroes in Crisis; but this ain’t that, and I need to support the works they come out with that aren’t grimdark. It’s not surprising that Johns is behind this one. I’m very much of the opinion that he’s the Anti-Didio, and that any hope of the DCU surviving Didio’s depredations lies in what Johns produces.
Now for some of the specifics:
There are a couple of cosmetic matters to address. First, they restored the original appearance of the wizard. IIRC, his N52 version was some sort of Australian Aborigine type rather than the Gandalf archetype that he had always been; and while I didn’t have (much of) a problem with the change, I’m glad to see the original look restored. Second, Freddy: while I understand the need to diversify appearances a bit more and I normally wouldn’t mind the recasting, I really wish Freddy was still the dark-haired kid from the original Captain Marvel — in particular, I wish that his superhero form looked a bit like an Elvis impersonator. Why? Because Elvis’ iconic sideburns look was something he copied from one of his favorite comic book characters, Freddy Freeman. That was the reason why, when Alex Ross added him to Kingdom Come, he made sure to give him the iconic Elvis look and even went so far as to call him “King Marvel”.
Which brings me to the names. I love the fact that the book highlights the problem of naming the characters using the magic word that causes them to transform; so first and foremost, they should not use “Shazam” in their codenames, or in their team name. Yes, Billy, “Captain Marvel” is a perfectly good name, and (OOC) one that you’ve got dibs on. Reclaim it! The “blunder” by one of her siblings of calling Mary “Mary” in public sets her up nicely to be called “Mary Marvel” — if that’s what they’re setting her up for, please and thank you. I mentioned before Alex Ross’ “King Marvel”; I don’t see that actually happening here due to the changes in Freddy’s appearance, but I’d love it if it were to happen. As for the new kids, I wouldn’t mind seeing names like “Captain Thunder” crop up among them — though maybe that would be better for Freddy, as his share of the Shazam name seems to be leaning heavily on the Power of Zeus (i.e., thunderbolts).
I am not at all bothered by there being so many Marvels in this book; in fact, that was a selling point for me: I was disappointed that immediately after relaunching the Marvels in N52’s Justice League and establishing that there were, in fact, six of them and not just Billy, they went back to focusing exclusively on Billy. If this title had focused exclusively on Billy, I would have given it a hard pass.
And yeah, I’m perfectly fine with adding three new Marvels: Eugene, Darla, and Carlos are perfect illustrations of how to add diversity to comics. They’re not defined by their cultural/racial backgrounds: Eugene isn’t “the Asian kid”, he’s “the smart one”; Darla isn’t “the black girl”; she’s “the hyperactive one”. I don’t yet know enough about Carlos to say anything about him (too early), but I’m pretty sure he’s not going to be “the Hispanic one” — his nature seems to revolve more around his physique (being chubby as a kid, and I’m pretty sure his part of Shazam is the Strength of Hercules — a nice dichotomy IMHO). I look forward to the backup stories that I’m sure will be coming out for each of them in the upcoming issues, fleshing them out the way the Mary backup fleshed out Mary Bromfield.
Speaking of which, the Bromfields are total jerks. I look forward to the story when Mary finds out that she’s not their actual daughter, and that she and Billy are actual siblings — though given the tone of the book so far, I figure that will prove to be less important than it might otherwise be: they’re already family.