Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely
Let's jump to the year 2029 and see what Billy Batson is up to two years after the Teen Titans and he took on the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse..... as seen in Future State: Teen Titans... Hopefully, the future has been kinder to our Mightiest Mortal than it has to the rest of the DC Universe because you'd just hate to see something bad happen to the Big Red Cheese... Yeah, don't expect anything bright or hopeful here, let's jump into this issue and check out just how dark things have become for our hero.
Since things are kind of up in the air about the "possible future" angle to these series of stories and whether or not this takes place after the end of Death Metal, where everything matters and where some people who were previously dead have come back to life. I just want to say that I'm deeply disappointed that when you open this book up you see that Titans Academy is called the Roy Harper Academy because that means our Speedy didn't make it folks and I was really hoping that he'd somehow find his way back to the world of the living. Beyond that initial disappointment though, you're thrown into a weird future where Shazam is the leader of a version of the Justice League with Vixen, Miss Martian, Bunker, Powerhouse (formerly the second Power Girl), and the Question and this aspect to our story is something I can really get behind because this is a cool team that I want to see more of... it's just too bad that Billy Batson isn't himself.
I'm putting this story as a continuation to the Teen Titans and Flash Future State stories where our heroes are taking on the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and even though it's not exactly spelled out this way, it looks to me like Shazam captured Neron, The Four Horsemen and the forces of Hell and locked them up in the Rock of Eternity and now has sacrificed his purity to keep them there. Too bad that with each day since then it seems that Shazam has been allowing the ends to justify the means and losing everything that makes him the hero we love. This is an interesting story overall and I can't wait to see more of it, but I do think that the flashback aspect and the overly used mystery concepts to this issue hurt this issue more than help.
All in all, I love the art in this issue and the Justice League team involved and even the brief team of bad guys we get..... and I love that I can do a little jump to conclusions to try and make this a continuation of the 2027 stories that are going on but that's just my headcanon at this moment, but boy do I wish that this issue was laid out better than it was because like we got out of the Future State Teen Titans, also by Tim Sheridan, this things you don't know severely outweigh what you get in this issue. We're killing bad guys, we're kidnapping good guys....... Hell, it seems like we're even having fight clubs with kidnapped good guys...... and I have no idea why and this issue doesn't want to do anything to try and explain it. There are definitely some things to like here, even with the dark turn of Shazam but I just wish that the story was told a little more coherent.
Bits and Pieces:
If you can get past a dark future for our Mightiest Mortal, Shazam! then you'll be treated to some excellent art, a badass looking Justice League team, and a possible continuation of what we're getting in other Future State books that leads to this 2029 future. Even if that last part doesn't turn out to be the case, you get some interesting things here, I just wish that the story was told in a better way that just didn't stack the mysteries going on here on top of each other and wanted to do some work in explaining this world to you.
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