The Curse of Shazam: Meet...

[auggie18]

*SPOILERS FOR THE LATEST SHAZAM INSTALLMENT*


...the new members of the Mar-

-Shazam Family!







Okay, this might be worth it.

Comments

Not hating..

[thepinkperil]

..Mary's costume. But Junior should have black Elvis hair. It's just wrong with the blonde Fabio look.

Is Mary Billy's sister still?

Re: Not hating..

[shadowpsykie]

Is Mary Billy's sister still?

it's been implied

Re: Not hating..

[jaybee3]

It's nitpicky I know but Freddy looks all kinds of wrong. They should at least have given him the Elvis hair when he changed.

Re: Not hating..

[theflames]

It'll smooth out with the change of artist. (Though I like the artist on this).

I don't miss the black hair, I know he was Elvis inspired, but he's been that way for so many years, lets have a 'creative breather' -- things can always change back.

Re: Not hating..

[akodo_rokku]

Technically? Elvis was Captain Marvel Junior inspired, and then it kind of looped back around.

Re: Not hating..

[theflames]

*smacks forehead* oh yeah you're correct! Haha, it's cool.

And yeah it did loop around in Kingdom Come, where they Captain Marvel Jr look ALOT like Elvis in one of his stage costumes (which was hilarious looking).

[shadowpsykie]

heh called it.

also.. kinda liking the costume designs here.

I'm guessing while they all get standard "Shazam" Powers, they also each embody an aspect of said power set?

[darkknightjrk]

It's implied that each of them may have a seperate power based on their personality. For example, one of the kids was apparently a bit of a techie, always having some gadget in his hand, but since all his stuff was on him when he transformed, he had the ability to communicate with and command any form of technology.

He gets a car to move and when he says thanks to the car, it honked back.

[ozaline]

Super Sentai Shazam Rangers!

[namey]

Adam: "I have such a headache..."

[majingojira]

I love you guys so much!

[icon_uk]

In fact, you love them so much that it just makes you want to SING!!

(Or no visuals, but the full length song!)

[paradoxrealm]

Oh Gods...
Why?
I'd spent so long forgetting... :-P

[icon_uk]

I'm British, we're innately evil... haven't you seen any Hollywood movies since... well, ever?

[paradoxrealm]

Well, yes, I know.
Long time watcher of SD, occasional commenter.
I'm British too, although that is probably proving your point... :-P

[lencannon]

Aaaa! This looks so great and I love all of their designs. Please don't ruin it DC!

[silverzeo]

You mean something in the lines of having them wait on a the shelf until something comes along for theme to do something print worthy?

[lencannon]

More like: "DC please don't make one of them evil and/or kill them."

[shadowpsykie]

we are missing Achilles

[icon_uk]

Wouldn't that most likely be Billy, since he's sharing his powers between them.

[evilsneak]

Let our powers combine!

[chrisdv]

"CAPTAIN MAR-Oh, wait. Sorry. Forgot we're not using that name anymore."

[jaybee3]

Hmmm. I love Mary's costume (back in red, just like Billy, even if it hasn't been established they're real siblings yet). Except for Freddy I don't mind the redesigns. Should have seen this coming after Flashpoint but strangely I didn't. Shazam really has turned into Captain Planet.

[icon_uk]

This seems to be the opposite of Captain Planet. In CP, the primary powers were singular to each Planeteer and had to be combined, this is a centrally empowered person disseminating the powers amongst other.

This reminds me more of how Power Pack got their powers

[icon_uk]

Like the designs, though still not struck by the hoods on Billy and Mary.

I like the younger girl having sandals which appear to be part running shoes, which would tie in with the concept of speed if she's got Mercury's powers.

[shadowpsykie]

Like the designs, though still not struck by the hoods on Billy and Mary.

ithink they all have hoods, Mary and Billy's are just raised

[q99]

This is rather call :)

[jlbarnett]

the artwork there is just demented

[razsolo]

Those costumes are all gonna suck so hard the first time another artist has to draw them.....really not a fan. Mary's boots in particular...it's like she put staples in her socks. :p

[jaybee3]

The thing that bothers me is the same as with the Superman and Flash DCnU costumes - all these lines. It seems so unnecessary. Especially since classic Marvel Family costumes are literally just that cloth costumes and not armor.

[silverhammerman]

Wow, they really went from zero to a hundred quick with the Marvel Family concept didn't they? Not sure I like that.

Do Billy's siblings keep their powers after this though, or did Bill just empower them temporarily? If the latter, that would actually be a pretty neat power for him to have. If they do keep the powers though, while I like the Marvel Family, I don't like the idea of Captain Marvel being just a member of a team rather than a Superman type hero.

It strikes me as lazy that rather than figure out how to make the Captain Marvel concept work, DC seems to have elected to make the Shazam franchise the Power Rangers of the DCU, which, while a fun concept in theory, is really an in name only sort of thing.

[darkknightjrk]

"Do Billy's siblings keep their powers after this though, or did Bill just empower them temporarily?"

Temporarily, though it was mostly because he did the "spell" incorrectly and it broke apart once it got to so many beings.

[big_daddy_d]

As I said before, I do like the look of Captain Marvel. He has a godly presence and seeing his foster siblings transformed makes them look like a pantheon.

[writeofway]

I was afraid it would end up with them combining into Captain Marvel like in Flashpoint, but I'm glad Johns went with the "Lieutenant Marvels" idea. With that said, I was satisfied with the ending. It started out kind of bad for me (asshole Billy) but I think I get it now.

[cypherfdp]

All those lines and straps... This is going to be a nightmare for Artists Yet to Come.

I like the idea of the Marvel Family/Shazam Rangers, but it seems kind of abrupt to introduce them all at once.

[alschroeder3]

I hated so many things of this series---the angry punkish young Billy Batson, the loss of the old beloved "Captain Marvel" name, the de-Olympianizing of the magic, the needless redesign of the wizard--but this moment---THIS MOMENT--almost made it all worth while.

I especially liked how some of them have differing abilities--like the Asian Marvel (not wanting to stereotype him, that is the only way I can refer to him to differentiate him from the others, till they give us differing names---his kid-name doesn't seem appropriate for that form) has control over technology, and the youngest now seems faster than Black Adam, perhaps the fastest of them all.

I had often thought that what the Marvel Family needed was actually a few new Marvels, to add some modern members to the mix, with differing but still mythological-based powers. (A female with mythical monsters mixed---face of a Medusa covered by a Dr. Fate-ish helmet, wings of a Harpy, claws of a Fury--or a Marvel who could get the weapons of the gods, like Helios' chariots, Zeus' thunderbolts, Hades helm of invisibility...) Not what I hoped, but new charactes mixed in the old Marvel Family mix, and I like the differing colors and abilities.

Definitely the high point of the series so far. Plus of course, the realization of Billy that family is not blood---just who you're connected to.

[espanolbot]

"the needless redesign of the wizard"

Besides him previously being an extremely Caucasian wizard despite him meaning to be Egyptian, you mean?

[alschroeder3]

Um....I REALLY hope you're not implying that I preferred the old Shazam (the wizard)'s apearance for RACIAL reasons. That was neither my intention nor warranted by what I said, and I quite frankly resent the implication. (Besides, the ancient Egyptians WERE Caucasian for the most part; granted there are differences in skin tone---but the original Shazam is shown in the exact same skin tone as all the Egyptians in say, the first Marvel Rama-Tut story, the same peach color they used for ALL Caucasians. Certainly Shazam had the same skin color as the Pharoah in the story where he's talking with the pharoah and other ancient Egyptians in CAPTAIN MARVEL ADVENTURES #79, or that Black Adam/Tech-Adam had in MARVEL FAMILY number one. The Golden Age tended to have a limited pallette when it came to skin tones.) If all they did was change the skin color....indeed, if they DID make the original Shazam look more Egyptian in other ways...I would have applauded. (Although there are some indications that the earliest Egyptians were bearded, unlke the later ones who favored being clean-shaven. See http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/beards.htm. So his un-Egyptian beard may have just been a sign of how ancient he was.)

No, what I meant is this: (If this doesn't show up in the post, click on the link below.)

The wizard (now nameless, seemingly) has gone from a stately blue gown to a more tattered and dishevelled appearance---with the EXCEPTION of a glowing lightning bolt across his bare chest. He looks, quite frankly, more like a raving lunatic than a stately wizard, the lightning bolt looks cheesy (nor am I sure what it's supposed to be---a glowing placard attached to that tattered cloak, flapping down? A magical symbol floating above his chest? What?) and I find the redesign A) needless and B) less effective in iconic terms than the original..which remember, served well for the best-selling comic book of all time.

I had similar feelings about John Byrne's redesign of Jor-El and Lara, and, as one reads the modern Action comics, we find Jor-El, at least, returned to more or less his Silver Age appearance, with a few additional flourishes. I thought the redesign Byrne did needless and off-putting, alienating older readers needlessly while not offering a better alternative. Evidently later artists and writers agreed, as Jor-El has slowly returned to a close approximation of his Silver Age self.

That is all I'm implying in this redesign of the wizard in Billy Batson's story, and again I resent the implication there was any racial bias to that preference. There wasn't.

[icon_uk]

Have to say I loved the Byrne "Man of Steel" take on Krypton. Rather than cliché "Just like Earth but with 50 years technological progress ( so they had 3D-movies, antigravity dancing and so on) that this was a superadvanced but sterile and emotionless world, where people lived alone because none of them could genuinely see any reason to live together and the computers did all that messy breeding business (which also gave them the chance to have Kal-El be BORN on Earth because he wasn't decanted from his birthing matrix until after his ship landed)

The outfits reflected their distancing themselves from the natural world, to the extent that Lara, seeing a hologram of a sweaty farmer on Earth (and why DID Jor-El have an image like that I wonder? ;) ) wasn't intigued so much as outraged that Jor-El would let her see such a hideous primitive sight.

[alschroeder3]

My problem with the take was that Krypton was such a sterile, cold world that instead of a tragedy when it blew up, it seemed more like a mercy killing. If Kal-El had grown up there, it would have been a horrible life he would have lived by any earthly standards, by any REASONABLE standards, as Superman agreed at the end of Byrne's WORLD OF KRYPTON mini-series. It robs Superman of one of the few tragic notes in his generally upbeat life story. It also seemed uncomfortably a copy of the society described in Asimov's Solaria of the novel THE NAKED SUN.

But tastes can differ on that. But when you have one of the most iconic characters of all, changes in even minor characters' appearances should be done with care. In the long run, the new Jor-El and Lara's appearance didn't take, and they slowly reclaimed their Silver Age appearance. The wizard is as pivotal to Billy Batson's story as Krypton and Jor-El and Lara were to Superman's, and when you had a character who was the best-selling super-hero of all time---I would proceed with caution in changing things needlessly. The name thing is understandable due to the legality. A more modern foster parent set-up made sense, although I didn't like Billy's angry young personality. But the change in appearance in the wizard is for me, off-putting and needless.

[espanolbot]

No, I don't mean for racial reasons, but although towards the end Egyptian royal families intermarried with Europeans (Cleopatra was ethnically Greek, for example) the idea that ancient Egyptians were Caucasian was a misconception caused by people in the 19th century who couldn't compute the idea of an African civilisation that managed to achieve the things they did.

It's a different version of the Wizard and Captain Marvel, an elseworld, I have no objections to them expanding the powerset or changing the ethnicity of the Wizard to reflect the more international sources of Billy's powers to be honest. Like I don't object to the more French Science Fiction comic-inspired version of Krypton from Man of Steel, for example.

[theflames]

I'm happy this happened. We have another team for the magic side of DC now :D

I'm REALLY happy this happened.

[silverhammerman]

I like that even though every else including Billy has updated costumes with a lot of fiddly bits and piping, Mary is still in basically in the same short, flouncy skirt that she's always had. Oh wait, I actually hate that. Everyone gets cool "modern" costumes, except for Mary, because apparently we need eye candy.

Also, I'm getting flashbacks to when Johns' introduced the veritable rainbow of Lantern Corps in Green Lantern. I think mostly it's the multi-colored suits reminding me, but I'd hate to see the next several years of Shazam get devoted to exploring stuff directly related to where they get their powers, I think Captain Marvel should fight diverse threats.

I really do think introducing ALL these deputies (Will they even be deputies or will they be full equals?) really takes away from the core fantasy of Captain Marvel, essentially "What if you could turn into Superman?" and I don't like one bit. The extended Marvel Family is fine, but Captain Marvel should still be basically a solo hero, not just a single member of a team.

On a positive note though, if Mary's costume being red like Billy's is a subtle indication that they're really blood relatives, that'd be pretty cool.

[jaybee3]

"I like that even though every else including Billy has updated costumes with a lot of fiddly bits and piping, Mary is still in basically in the same short, flouncy skirt that she's always had. Oh wait, I actually hate that. Everyone gets cool "modern" costumes, except for Mary, because apparently we need eye candy."

Part of me thinks they kept the short skirt for tradition and part of me thinks they kept it because they intend on sexualizing her at some point as they always do (Darla is a bit young for that). Remember despite being underage (in every state of the union) DC had her routinely hit on by the likes of Booster Gold and Guy Gardner (Keith Giffen even pitched her losing her viriginity to either Guy or Ambush Bug! off-panel in the SuperBuddies books and trading her white suit back to the red one) and then in Countdown they gave her the shortest leather mini-skirt known to be man, she was propositioned to be Darkseid's concubine and they included a panty shot in every issue she appeared. That's not even going into what Morrison did to her in Final Crisis and then Johns/Ordways revisited it just awhile later in JSA. All with Mary not aging over 16 in canon. So I would not put her past DC to mess her up again and the short skirt may be a subtle sign of that (notice Darla who is also a girl doesn't have one).

"The extended Marvel Family is fine, but Captain Marvel should still be basically a solo hero, not just a single member of a team."

The concept of an extended Marvel "Family" has always been a staple of the franchise since CC Beck and Otto Binder created Mary, Freddy, Uncle Dudley, Hoppy, Tawny, etc. If anything it was Captain Marve Jr. who was usually the solo hero in his Golden Age book. One of the problems with Winick's "Shazam" re-invention pre-reboot was he got rid of Billy (by making him the Wizard with nothing to do), put Mary into a coma (talk about fridging) and made Freddy literally a sole hero with no base of support. It just didn't look like Shazam/the Marvels anymore but an entirely different hero.

[silverhammerman]

I don't have any problem with the Family, I actually think it's pretty great, but when Captain Marvel shows up by himself the reader shouldn't be wondering where the others are, that's all.

[junipepper]

I actually really like Mary's new costume -- and as a mother of high-school and college age daughters, I'm usually the first person voicing unhappiness over overly sexy costumes on the girl heroes. I just don't think this is overly sexy. It's just a skirt. The top gives plenty of coverage. I'd like to think she's wearing bike shorts underneath the skirt, just as an indication that she's not an idiot, but still. There are a fair number of female heroes not wearing skirts who are much further out there. For example, I find Supergirl's crotch triangle thing much more disturbing than this.

In fact, I like it better than the others because it's much less fussy.

I'd hate to see her over-sexualized, and I'm not saying they won't do the Dark Mary thing on her; they very well may, but as of now, I'm not bothered by her outfit.

[silverhammerman]

I do actually think Mary's costume looks the best of them, but I'm still bothered by it.

What gets me is that all the other deputies have a pretty consistent look, the only difference is the color and the markings, and in the case of the youngest girl, a lack of sleeves. But then Mary's costume pretty much breaks completely from that look and it's really jarring, it's the ONLY one that doesn't follow the same basic design and as a result she looks out of place. It's like if one of the Power Rangers were rocking color coordinated cargo shorts with their spandex, it's incongruous.

It's not actually a super gratuitous costume but it does look really out of place to me and I'm convinced that DC just didn't want to cover up a character whom they've been using as eye candy for the past decade or so.