After A While, Crocodile
It's time to head back to Philly to check in on our Mightiest Mortal, Mary Marvel..... or as DC would like us to call her, The New Champion of Shazam! In our previous issue, we saw Mary Bromfield getting her life together and figuring out who she was outside of her Marvel Family but like Michael Corleone, just when Mary thought she was out, they pulled her back in, and now Mary finds herself in a mystery that involves her foster parents going missing and some bad things going on in Philly that in our previous issue involved the Disaster Master and some tech device to charge him up. Let's jump into this issue and see where the power of Shazam leads our hero.
For this issue of The New Champion of Shazam! we find Mary being the only adult left in her little family and because of that, she needs to come back home to Philly and leave her aspirations of going to Vassar behind so that she can take care of Pedro, Eugene, Freddy, and Darla, while also using her powers of Shazam to figure out what happened to her foster parents and holding this new evil in the City of Brotherly Love at bay. While a lot of that sounds great, it does ultimately mean though that a good portion of what we got in the previous issue doesn't matter now and all the fun we thought we might get out of Mary and her new roommates at college are just left behind and has become Mary enrolling herself into Fawcett Community College so she can continue her education, while also keeping an eye out as the school is located around the area of her parent's disappearance and also the bank robbery committed by the Disaster Master.
So while it does feel like we're starting over to a degree we still have our basics that will set up drama for Mary in our upcoming issues and show us how her family feels about their parents missing and how they feel about Mary being the only one to have powers anymore...... while we also have some great but grittier callbacks to Fawcett comics and giving them the Philly feel. It's still an interesting road they have Mary on but is issue definitely has more bumps than the previous in what it's trying to do but ultimately I'm just happy that I still had fun.
All in all, the art continues to be great throughout and reminds me how happy I am that Doc Shaner has his hands on a Shazam property. As for the story, yeah, there are some issues for me in that it feels like we're starting over again in a four-issue series, but the stuff that we got here with introducing Fawcett Community College was a lot of fun and Mary trying to get to the bottom of this evil in Philly is great as well as she knows that her parents' disappearance is somehow connected. I just wish that the family life and what goes into that as a foster kid would have been discussed more because it barely feels like the kids care about Victor and Rosa going missing and I was left wondering how the legal aspect of that would work out since while technically Mary is an adult and can take care of her siblings, she doesn't exactly have a job and these finer points are left behind...... probably because they'd be boring and bog down the story, but I was still left curious. With that though, I still really enjoy this series and look forward to the next issue.
Make sure to listen to our Weekly DC Comics Recap and Review Podcast to hear us talk more about this book. Just look up "Weird Science DC Comics" anywhere you listen to podcasts or click here for podcast links and more: https://campsite.bio/weirdsciencecomics
Bits and Pieces:
The power continues to flow in this issue as Mary Marvel has a lot more on her plate than she previously thought. The art is great and I love the Fawcett Comics callbacks, I just wish that some of the finer points and drama of this story would have been addressed more and that this issue didn't feel like almost starting over again, but even with that I still found myself having a lot of fun with this issue.
So I think I know the answer but is DC basically sticking with the New 52 origin for the Shazam characters? And are Billy and Mary not biological siblings in that continuity?
ReplyDeleteYeah, like Aquaman, Shazam's continuity is straight from New 52.
Delete