Superman/Shazam!: First Thunder

[espanolbot]

Here's some parts from the Judd Winick/Joshua Middleton four issue miniseries, First Thunder.

Four issues of thirty pages, 6 from issue 1, 7 from 2 and 3, and 10 from issue 4.

Part 1







Cutting to the present, and a gang of magic-wielding thieves have been stealing artefacts from various museums around the US. They attack a museum in Metropolis, battle Superman and then manage to get away due to Clark's weakness to magic. After Billy, who is living in a tent in an abandoned subway station, reads about the robberies in a newspaper he figures out that the museum in Fawcett City will likely have some stuff stolen too, as it's also got some of the artefacts in it. The issue ends with Cap beginning to fight some summoned trolls when Superman shows up to help out...

Issue Two
Sometime before the robberies above mentioned, Sivana is travelling to Metrpolis to ask Luthor who he deals with his costumed superhero, the doctor having finally had enough of Captain Marvel interferring with his schemes.

What follows is the DC villain version of the Daleks vs. Cybermen arguement from Doctor Who...






Back in the present, after defeating the trolls, Superman and Captain Marvel go and have a chat about being a superhero on Mount Everest, and a friendship seems to form between them.



Issue 3
It turns out that the artefacts were being stolen by occult thieves that Sivana had hired to act as a distraction so that Spec would be able to track easier, as well as the thieves themselves creating the double threat of incarnating the anti-Marvel Sabbac while causing Eclipso to possess his host at the same time. So on the one hand, they could kill Marvel or on the other they'd make him easier to follow.

This ultimately proves tobe unnecessary when it turned out that Spec managed to use his own powers to follow Cap, work out how his powers work and provide the information necessary to kill him to Sivana...



With this information in hand, Sivana calls in an assassination squad to kill Billy, thus getting rid of Captain Marvel once and for all. His assistant asks him isn't that somewhat drastic, and what if Spec's information was wrong? Sivana replies "Then I would be guilty of murdering an innocent child... I'll get over it."

Later, after Cap and Superman have defeated the pair of supervillains...





Issue 4
Billy turns into Captain Marvel, and defeats the hit squad with minimal effort, then turns... and sees that his friend has been shot right through the chest. He rushes him to hospital, but it's too late, he dies on the operating table.

Enraged, Billy storms the police station where the members of the assassination team are being held in custody. They've heard about Scott's death and they're making it very clear that they are in a very bad situation as a result, but still the hitmen refuse to talk. At least until Cap storms into the interrogation and threatens to squash people's heads until they tell him who hired them.

Meanwhile, Dr Sivana is also enraged, but that's because he's heard that they shot the wrong person. Cap then demolishes most of his headquarters and almost stranges him to death before just stopping and flying away. Sivana decides that this is a good time to go and hide a very long way away.

Clark meanwhile, reads about Cap's rampage in an article that Lois wrote, and flies to Everest to tell him for for endangering so many lives so recklessly.

Comments

[icon_uk]

The usual "Why CAN'T Shazam help make Billy's life a little better?" debate to one side, and the couple of cute scenes here and there, the washed out, very flat colours take me RIGHT out of this.

Plus, what kind of idiot assault plan on a kid they know can transform with a single, two-syllable word, involves storming the place that he lives in riot gear, ANNOUNCING yourself and THEN start firing.

You either A) Shoot first, B) Consider using a sniper or C) Get close enough (possibly by disguise) to stop him being able to say anything before you either attack him, or prevent him talking. After all the build up, this is a seriously weak-ass assault plan.

[filkertom]

And then your mini-series is over. :)

Seriously, everybody does something stupid once in a while. That's how the story keeps going. And it's not just the heroes who always get dumped on; every now and then, the breaks have to go their way. The reason the first Die Hard movie is so amazing is that nobody does anything stupid, and the story keeps going anyway. Would you have been happier if the trained snipers with night-vision goggles had all missed Billy?

(Having said that, it might have been interesting in a longer story arc for Billy to be shot and then transform, and Cap had to get himself to a hospital before he could change back.)

Not having read this one earlier, I like pretty much everything on these pages, including Supes taking Dumbled-, erm, Shazam to task, and laying into the notions of Fate and Destiny. Really nice stuff.

[icon_uk]

I'd have preferred if Billy had been shown to be ingenious enough to spot the snipers, or the stealth troops had overlooked something obvious to child logic (perhaps Billy, being a little uncertain of his safety in the station, laid a layer of potato chips around the entrance, so anyone heavy coming in would make loud crunching footsteps, giving him time to hide)

And well, yeah, someone has to carry the stupid baton now and again, but this is the plan put together by someone who came with a personal recommendation from LEX LUTHOR for Doctor Sivana, and THAT'S the best he could come up with?

I'm reminded of Rule 12 of the "Evil Overlord" list; "One of my advisors will be an average five-year-old child. Any flaws in my plan that he is able to spot will be corrected before implementation."

[espanolbot]

Basically Sivana got the information and told these guys, who are meant to be top of the line assassins, to go and kill him, assuming that they'd be able to handle a child if they caught him by suprise...

And the fact that they botched it to heavily pissed him off so much that immediately afterwards he was shown drinking Scotch and angrily calling the assassins a bunch of "imbecilic, braindamaged, incompetant hayseeds!" and that "I should've just sent a chimpanzee on roller skates with with pounds of C4 strapped to its back".

His assistant tells him that they were the best that Sivana's more than substantial fortune could buy, so presumably Sivana didn't tell them that Billy was Captain Marvel or something... I don't know, he might have just told them to kill the kid in the red jumper or summat.

[icon_uk]

That... actually makes me feel a little better about it. :)

[gerardotejada]

I agree completly, in ONE PANEL, one panel for god´s sake! It the only thing is needed to ruin a promisory series.

The interaction between Sivana and Luthor, the epic narration of Shazam, the Naive introduction of Billy "im just here to help", The conversation between Capitan Marvel and Superman about their powers, The incompetence of Supes about Magic Logic, the fact that Billy livng in the streets is not a source for overwhelming angst but still serves as a dramatic factor, Billy and his friend talking and seeing the news papers in something reminicent of a sleep over... GENIOUS!

Then some one hits the dog, a boy dies and stuff hapens and we are remembered this is a Winick comic, the man who thought Mia Dearden didnt had a dark enough background and gave her AIDS just because he won a lot of GLAAD awards with his dumb book about beign in MTV´s Real Life with an VIH positive member. "Look at me, I am Judd Winick and I got a Job because I was on TV".

[gerardotejada]

Forget the last thing, that was just mean.

[gerardotejada]

Really on the negative side eh?

You have to admit the thing was awsome till the "death kid part", the art I beautifull from were Im standing the colors remind me of the origial series, everything very yellow and red.

The raid was very messy, you cant just send "one sniper" when you are dealing with the power of shazam, in the fiction world Capitan Marvel is seing as a mayor threat and that sticks on you. Probably you send a mayor trained force of special oerations get close to him and shoot him in the back from afar, then you got the friend saving Billy or Billy "moving to get a magazine" for the lulz mixed with the dramatic charge, etc.

Look I write better than Winick! no surprises there. But you have to admit what you see before the assault is pretty good writing, even with the cliches, It has an old school vibe but still a modern touch.