Let's talk at greater length about Shazam! #1

•Last Wednesday finally saw the release of Geoff Johns' follow-up to his 2012-2013 Captain Marvel/Shazam strip from Justice League, in the form of a new monthly series drawn by Dale Eaglesham and colored by Mike Atiyeh. I reviewed it here, if you'd like to read a full, formal review of the debut issue. If you would not like to, then I can tell you here that the first issue is pretty good: It's certainly not the Captain Marvel/Shazam comic I would have written, nor is it of the sort I would most like to read (both Multiversity: Thunderworld Adventures and Convergence: Shazam were closer to what I would have wanted to read; if they could do that in the DCU, I think they'd be all set). But it is probably the comic DC had to do at this particular point, to follow up on Johns' strip-turned-graphic novel with Gary Frank, which appears to be the basis of the upcoming Shazam movie.

So while there are still some strange, half-embarrassed elements from that New 52 relaunch of the character and franchise present, we do see Johns pulling back in some of his previous attempts to make the story more "realistic" or, well, gritty I guess, like Billy Batson no longer being the asshole teen he was when we first met him, but having genuinely changed as a person, becoming a protagonist that a reader might not mind being in the same room with.

Eaglesham was probably the ideal artist for the book at this point, too, as he can bridge the gap between Franks' style and still work in images that are light and fun. Like the above, which packs the whole Shazam Family--the transformed versions of Billy, Mary, Freddie and the three "Lieutenant Marvels"--into a single panel, providing them with a range of expressions that recalls Kevin Maguire's JLI comics.

•With his hood down, the biggest, most glaring change between Cap's traditional costume and his New 52 one is that he and his siblings all have perpetually shining lightning bolt logos on their chests. In the trailers for the movie we've seen so far, it simply glows all the time, as if actor Zachary Levi is wearing a neon sign embedded in the chest of his goofy-looking muscle suit. In the comics, the bolts shine with an electric blue light that interrupt the red/yellow color scheme, and further suggest a hollowness to the characters' torsos, as if they are living batteries with lightning bolt-shaped holes in their chests that the magic lightning emanates from. I'm...not a fan of the look.

That impression may be more suggestion than reality, but the lighting glowing from within a chest logo reminds me of Alex Ross's Kingdom Come Green Lantern (and the character's last redesign before The New 52-boot; there's a nice image of that in this survey of Alan Scott costumes), whose green armor forms a power battery of sorts around him, and, to a lesser degree the Alpha Lanterns from Johns' run on the Green Lantern titles.


•In both of the above images, you can see that the Shazam lightning logos are alive with Kirby dots. I...don't like that. While Jack Kirby was such a prolific superhero creator and comics artists for both of the Big Two comics publishers (and plenty of other publishers), Captain Marvel was a superhero character he did not create, and it seems weird that every appearance of the hero should be accompanied by a visual element that has long since become synonymous with Kirby.

•The teenage superhero confronting the gang of gunmen wearing cheap, store-bought masks of the universes preeminent superhero team made me a little uncomfortable. Coincidence or homage, you would think someone somewhere along the line would have noticed how closely resembles the scene from Spider-Man: Homecoming and felt at least as uncomfortable, and suggested maybe changing their masks.

•I was a little surprised that Billy alludes to his superhero alter-ego's difficulty with a name not once, but twice in the same comic, both in the panel where Captain Marvel/Shazam first appears, and the one in the above panel, where he mentions his name. As I assume anyone knows who has read this deeply into a blog post of mine knows, the character's name is "Captain Marvel," although DC has experimented for years in trying to change it to Shazam and, briefly, just "Marvel", which doesn't really help at all (In terms of the latter, Captain Marvel Jr. was going to become the new Captain Marvel, and take the name "Shazam," while the former Captain Marvel was going to take the place of the wizard, and go by "Marvel").

The idea of changing Captain Marvel's name to Shazam seems to be that since DC hasn't been legally able to name TV shows, comics and now movies "Captain Marvel" for so long, due to the existence of a succession of lesser Marvel Comics characters who have tossed the codename around like a hot potato seemingly just to keep Fawcett's superman down, a lot of people who don't read comics have just assumed Shazam was the name of the hero, rather than the name of the wizard. The problem, of course, is that since "Shazam!" is Billy's magic word, and the saying of it is so key to the character's basic story, that every time the character introduces himself, he should revert to Billy, and any time Billy tried talking about the hero, he would transform into the hero (that latter was more of a problem when Billy was a boy reporter; so far, this Billy doesn't have a job, although I guess I won't be at all surprised if he becomes an amateur podcaster or does a youth podcast for the local radio station WHIZ).

That's the problem he alludes to when he decides not to announce himself to the gunmen, and that the whole Shazam Family stumble into when they meet with the police after the fight. That it's apparently been a year since the events now collected in Johns and Frank's Shazam trade paperback and the characters still don't have names, and here we see Billy making a reference to the hero's "real" name before being cut off makes me wonder if DC and/or Johns are rethinking the name of the character, or are just acknowledging the difficulty in the change.

I guess it will be unlikely for them to not call him Shazam, given the upcoming release of the film, but it's not impossible. Maybe they will settle on something like Captain or The Captain or even Captain Shazam...? I don't know; I remain curious about Mary and Freddie's alter egos, as "Mary Marvel" and "Captain Marvel Jr." seem out, and "Mary Shazam" and "Shazam Jr." sound so silly.

And then there's the matter of the new Lieutenants, who we can be certain will not be Tall Marvel, Fat Marvel and Hill Marvel (Maybe they will have names referencing their powers of strength, super-speed and the ability to talk to machines, like Captain Thunder, Lighting Girl and...The One Who Talks To Machines...?)

•This issue ends with a back-up story about how Mary joined the Vasquez family, where she was the second foster child, to follow Freddie (introduced reading a book about making your own fireworks, with the words "For Adults only" visible on the cover). It's drawn by Sen, whose style seems far better suited to a kid-friendly comic than Eaglesham's (Like most DCU books though, this is rated "T for Teen", and DC thus doesn't really find it appropriate for most kids, even if it has so far been free of Black Adam tearing people limb from limb or anything).

Sen's Mary and Darla still look youthful when transformed; Mary does seem to "age up" now like Billy when she transforms, but Darla is supposed to retain her youthful look, even though Eaglesham draws her as if she too ages up.

But forget all that. Yes, Sen's art is great, and yes, it did make me want to see what this comic or the Shazam/Captain Marvel relaunch might have looked like had she drawn the whole shebang instead of Franks and Eaglesham (as well as what the characters might have looked like had they been redesigned in a more classic-looking direction than into the New 52 aesthetic; think Miriam Marvel and Black Adam's redesigns from the pages of Bombshells, for example). The important thing is this: Look, that rabbit has received Marvel-ous powers when the girl's transform!

This version of Hoppy is brown and white, like Art Baltazar's version from Tiny Titans and the DC Super-Pets franchise, rather than the pink of the original Hoppy. Not the shape of the brown of his fur after his transformation, too. I hope this wasn't just a one-off gag appearance and that we'll see more of Hoppy in the future. And I hope he will get a little costume, rather than just being a lightning-powered rabbit in the way that the first story arc's Tawky was just a magically powered-up tiger rather than a talking tiger wearing a suit. we'll see.