Shazam! #5 Review

Black Adam: Friend Or Foe?

Written By: Geoff Johns
Art By: Marco Santucci, Dale Eaglesham, Scott Kolins, Max Raynor, Mike Atiyeh, Rob Leigh

Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: May 8, 2019

It's back to the Magiclands for us as we see if the Shazam Family can locate each other now that Billy and Mary are trapped in the Funlands, Eugene and Pedro in the Gamelands and Freddy and Darla in the Wildlands.  If that wasn't enough it seems that with the Magiclands back open it has attracted someone that our heroes might not want to deal with and that person is Black Adam.  Let's jump into this issue to see how our heroes fare and if Black Adam will be the real hero in the long run.  Let's check it out.

For this issue of Shazam! we see Black Adam on the case and with him entering the Funlands to find Billy, it looks like he may not be on the up and up like I was hoping previously because in order to save the day he might have the plan of killing our hero in order to make sure that a bunch of kids don't have the power of the Wizard Shazam! and with that making sure that the other Magiclands are shut down so that no one has access to them or them to us.  

Besides this part of the story though, that totally leads us back to our Monster Society of Evil that I can't wait to see more of, the rest of the issue is broken up between our three groups of heroes and what they're dealing with in each of their magiclands.  Even though the idea of of the Gamelands previously made me roll my eyes, what we get out of Eugene and Pedro actually made me really happy and it gave us a moment to learn more about the two boys and what they're lives have been like and why they are the way they are.  It was a clever bit of characterization that I really appreciated and while the majority of this was found in this section, the parts with Billy and Mary in the Funlands and Freddy and Darla in Wildlands did a decent job of making us see characters for who they really are too.  

All in all, I do think that we still may be spreading ourselves a little too thin because we still have that mystery of Billy's father going on in the Earthlands...... or just Earth for us non magic users and while I loved each and every part with our heroes, I wanted more and more.  Probably not a bad thing when it comes to a series like this, but it becomes frustrating as a reader, especially when this series is constantly delayed.  I'm still loving this title though and even with us having four artists on this issue, I actually didn't find myself noticing too much and think that for what we got, it all worked pretty well together, especially since we had different looks for different lands in this book.  If you've been holding off buying Shazam!, I definitely suggest that you start picking it up now because it's one of the best books coming out of DC Comics at the moment.

Bits and Pieces:

Are you ready to have some fun?  Well look no further than this book because each and every issue jams as much of it as it can hold.  I love these heroes so much and Geoff Johns is finding cool and clever ways to split up our time within these different magiclands and allowing us to discover just who these heroes are.  The art, even with having four artists is great and my biggest concern right now is that we have so much story and only so much room to tell it each issue.

8.5/10