Shazam! #6 Review

Secrets Revealed!

Written By: Geoff Johns
Art By: Marco Santucci, Dale Eaglesham, Scott Kolins, Mike Atiyeh, Rob Leigh
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: June 5, 2019


The Magiclands are calling once again and that means it's time to check in on our Shazam! Family and see how they're dealing with their exploration.  Previously, we saw Billy and Mary taking on King Kid in the Funlands, Eugene and Pedro racing to get out of the Gamelands and Freddy and Darla being sentenced to death in the Wildlands.  Yeah, things aren't all pinatas and RC Cola for our heroes, but maybe their savior comes in a strange form.  That's right, Black Adam has entered the story and hopefully he can get past Dr. Sivana, who was blocking his path into the Funlands.  Let's jump into this issue and see what's what and if Billy's biological father showing back up is going to turn our heroes' world upside down.  Let's check it out.



Getting back into the Magiclands we take a bit of detour in what we've been dealing with and instead of finding out how Freddy and Darla will deal with being fed to the tigers in the Wildlands, this issue decides that it's been waiting too long to deal with Billy meeting his father, which while it is something I knew we'd have to get back to feels a bit forced to get there and how Mary and Billy were thrown out of the Rock of Eternity is just plain odd. 

With that in mind though, this new direction we get by the end is something that I really didn't expect going into this issue and while I'm a bit torn about the ending and what we get out of it......  it may lead to better stories down the line.  It just feels odd that it comes out of nowhere here while we still have four of our family trapped in the Gamelands and Wildlands.  Even with some weirdness from this issue, the meeting between Billy and his father was really nice and creates a whole new set of drama for our heroes to deal with going forward........ I just wish we could have gotten done the Magiclands stuff first, not to mention the Monster Society of Evil.

All in all, the art remains great in this issue, even with three artists, but the pacing of this issue is a bit off to me from previous installments.  Yeah, we've had a lot of jumping around and a lot of story being thrown at us from left to right, but in this it feels like we completely put a pin in one aspect to deal with Billy's father and it threw me out of the story a bit, even though I enjoyed the end result.  Hopefully all the aspects to this big story can find a better way to be told going forward because when I dive into this series, I don't want anything throwing me out.

Bits and Pieces:

The pacing is a bit off with the ways that the different aspects of this story are being told, but even with that, this is a very enjoyable issue that looks great and throws our heroes into uncharted territory that I can't wait to see explored going further.

8/10