Shazam #1 – Review

By: Eric Wallace (writer), Cliff Richards (artist), Hi-Fi (colorist)

The Story: Mary Batson, did no one ever tell you making deals with demons is never a good idea?

The Review: Captain Marvel and the rest of his ilk have always seemed a little out of place in the DCU.  Besides the gimmick of their magic word, there’s not much setting them apart from their superhero peers.  It’s even difficult seeing the Big Red Cheese himself as anything other than Superman—with magic (an idea Grant Morrison played with in Final Crisis).  Most writers have difficulty selling the Marvels’ natural goody-goodiness in a world that requires some attitude to succeed.

This is the problem Eric Wallace runs into in his one-shot of the Marvel family.  On the one hand, he deserves a bit of a break; the characters were left in shambles the last time they were written.  Billy and Mary lost their powers, which their underdeveloped civilian personas couldn’t possibly make up for.  Freddy Freeman’s promotion to the red outfit lost the Jr. from his name and added some long hair, but has otherwise done nothing to invigorate the character.  Wallace is working an uphill battle here.

But from another perspective, Wallace had a great opportunity to breathe some new life into the characters, and he mostly squanders it.  The tension between the Batsons and Freddy introduced at the start of the issue turns out to be a blind, which means they never lost trust in each other at all, which also means they avoid any character-building personal conflicts.  This is a big miss, since after all these years, their camaraderie seems based on tradition more than any signs of genuine friendship.

Wallace’s choice to have the Batsons bemoan the loss of their powers and how it’s holding them back comes across shallow and even a little insulting.  After all, when you consider the number of heroes in the DCU alone who play it no-powers style, wistfully regretting your former gods-given abilities seems a trifle narrow-minded, don’t you think?  It feels as if since the Marvels really have no identity beyond their powers, the only stories you can give them have to involve the loss of/earning of/quest for their powers.  Frankly, that’s all getting pretty old.

Final Crisis #6 – Review

By Grant Morrison (writer), JG Jones, Carlos Pacheco, Doug Mahnke, Marco Rudy, Chirstian Alamy, Jesus Merino (artists)

Honestly?  I love Grant Morrison’s work.  I admire his wild imagination and flair for telling chaotic stories that somehow always manage to make a strange kind of sense.  I loved The Invisibles, JLA, We3 and New X-Men, and even picked up his entire run on Seven Soldiers of Victory, a thematic prequel to Final Crisis.  I’m telling you this so you’ll know I’m not coming into this story cold.  I picked up every issue so far and followed the plot.  Sadly, I couldn’t care less for any of it.

And why should I, when DC has had a track record for over twenty years now of hitting the reset button with these massive storylines that promise to dazzle you with the illusion of change, only to be erased a few years later so that everything can be just the way it was before?  While I like the idea of Darkseid and his pantheon of Dark Gods gaining dominion over Earth, allowing the villains to finally win, I know things won’t stay this way long enough to make a difference, and if I know that then why bother reading?  Take this issue for example: do we really think the outcome of Batman’s battle with Darkseid is definitive?  How long before they reverse what they’ve done?

Also, why is it that these DC epics aren’t more friendly to new readers?  Why do they demand you to have a working knowledge of the last seventy years of DC continuity in order to understand them?!  Not only has Final Crisis not been friendly to new readers, it actively works to discourage and drive them away; seeking instead to cater only to those faithful elitists that have been reading DC comics for a long, long time.  The epic bullshit that Bendis writes for Marvel may be slightly shy of moronic, but at least his stories strive to be entertaining and accessible to new readers!

Ultimately, I can’t decide if Morrison is a victim of editorial slavery or an advocate of the bad storytelling DC has been pushing down our throats since Crisis on Infinite Earths. I can say with confidence though that this series was not meant for the casual reader.  It does not like you. In fact, it wants you to go away.

Grade: D-

-Tony Rakittke