Compare and contrast these pages from 1987's Shazam: The New Beginning and 2012's "Shazam!"

A CYNICAL BILLY BATSON RELUCTANTLY SAYS "SHAZAM" AT THE WIZARD'S INSISTENCE:

BLACK ADAM RETURNS TO THE PRESENT, MEETS SIVANA AND HOLDS HIM ALOFT BY HIS COLLAR:

BLACK ADAM FLIES SIVANA TO THE TOP OF A HIGH STRUCTURE SO THEY CAN DISCUSS THEIR ALLIANCE:

In 1987, DC Comics had writer Roy Thomas reintroduce C.C. Beck and Bill Parker's Golden Age superhero Captain Marvel to their DC Universe shared setting. This followed the 1986-1987 Crisis On Infinite Earths limited series, in which that shared setting was refreshed and recreated, with older characters being reinvented for more modern times. Thomas and co-writer Dann Thomas wrote the four-issue Shazam: The New Beginning, which was penciled and inked by Tom Mandrake and colored by Joe Orlando. In 2017 it was collected along with another Thomas-written story from the era and re-released in a hardcover format as Shazam: The New Beginning 30th Anniversary Deluxe Edition.

In 2012, DC Comics had writer Geoff Johns reintroduce Captain Marvel, now re-named "Shazam," to their DC Universe shared setting. This followed the 2011 Flashpoint miniseries, in which that shared setting was rebooted and recreated, with classic characters being reinvented for more modern times and introduced to readers as if for the very first time. Johns wrote a "Shazam" strip as a back-up in his Justice League ongoing series. It was penciled and inked by Gary Frank and colored by Brad Anderson. It was later collected into a trade paperback under the title Shazam Vol. 1 and, later, republished as Shazam: Origins. It was the basis of the 2019 film.

Interestingly, in rather broad strokes, the two miniseries, which had identical mandates, resembled one another in terms of their plots. In both, scientist Dr. Sivana frees the Wizard Shazam's first champion, Black Adam, from his centuries-old imprisonment and the two villains become allies. Meanwhile, orphan Billy Batson is given a magical word by the wizard in order to transform himself into a superhero. Both stories even end with the teasing introduction of another of Captain Marvel's most colorful villains, Mr. Mind.

Despite the similarities of the broad shape of the two Captain Marvel reintroductions, they differ quite a bit in the details (Thomas' story posited Sivana as Billy's uncle, and included versions of the pre-existent characters Uncle Dudley, Magnificus and Beautia and even Hoppy, The Marvel Bunny; Johns', meanwhile, included versions of Mary Marvel, Captain Marvel Jr., Mr. Tawky Tawny and Ibac...plus three new "lieutenant" Marvels).

Still, I was struck by the degree to which certain scenes in the Johns/Frank comic so strongly echoed scenes from the Thomas/Mandrake take. Obviously, Johns and Frank drew inspiration from their predecessors, even as their Captain Marvel/Shazam story was quite different in tone, emphasis and in so many of the particulars.

On the new Birds of Prey Vol. 1 collection

Despite the occasional hand-wringing within the comics industry about the state of DC Comics' performance in month-to-month sales to direct market comic shops, and whether their near-constant reboots and refreshes do more harm than good (a new round of which began when an Internet rumor-mongerer began mongering rumors), the fact remains that DC has an incredible back catalog of great comics, and a generally excellent track record for keeping their best books in print. A modern DC fan could probably ignore the publisher's monthly serial comics output in favor of collections of older material, and be very, very happy for a long time.

There are, of course, holes in their catalog of trade collections, some of which they seem to just now be starting to fill (The 1987-1992 Suicide Squad being one of the better examples; it apparently took the upcoming movie to kick them in the pants to get the good run of Suicide Squad available in trade*).

I am extremely excited about this, as books like Suicide Squad, the Garth Ennis/John McCrea 1993-1995 run on The Demon and Norm Breyfogle-drawn Batman comics are series I've spent years trying to track down in single-issue format from bargain bins, never managing to complete the runs, and, inevitably, getting and reading them out of order.

That excitement is tempered with fears of my own mortality, however, as some of those books are ones I remember seeing on the new comics rack every Wednesday, during a time well before DC and Marvel collected everything they published serially in trade format later, and only did so for big, important or classic stories and runs. While I'm glad that the Chuck Dixon-written Robin miniseries and ongoing are being collected, for example, or that the original, mostly Dixon-written Birds of Prey comics are finally being reprinted, the fact also makes me feel the specter of death breathing down my neck. The first Birds of Prey special is 20 years old? The first Dixon/Tom Lyle Robin miniseries is 25 years old?!

My God, I'm old!

I'll likely skip the first few volumes of DC's Robin reprints, as I have the first three mini-series and the first few issues of the monthly already (although I guess buying the trades would reduce the number of old comics in my comics midden, which I will someday bequeath to my nieces and nephew, in the most annoying inheritance possible: "And finally, to my beloved nieces and nephew, I leave these thousands and thousands of old, worthless comic books, none of which ever actually appreciated in value in any way that would even be worth your trying to sell, even those I thought would be solid investments, like 'The Death of Superman' and Spawn #1. Enjoy lugging all these decrepit, disintegrating longboxes to the recycling center!"

But Birds of Prey is a different matter entirely.

When the Black Canary/Oracle: Birds of Prey #1 one-shot was released in 1996, I was in my freshman year in college, and on a pretty limited comics-buying budget, my only discretionary spending coming from the extremely part-time jobs I had at that point. I got my Gotham-based vigilante crime-fighter needs filled by a handful of Batman comics, and skipped this, as well as all of the comics contained in the first volume collecting the original, pre-Gail Simone Birds of Prey.

She's the writer most associated with the title at this point, having written the ongoing series from 2003-2007, about 50 issues, and then returning for the first 13 issues of the short-lived, 2010-2011 second volume of the series. Prior to this, just about every Birds of Prey collection available was from Simone's run, or that of her successors Sean McKeever, Tony Bedard and Marc Andreyko, or from the third, New 52 volume of the series by...well, actually, let's continue to pretend that volume doesn't exist, shall we?

Dixon wrote all of the pre-monthly one-shots and mini-series, as well as the first 46 issues of the 1999-launched ongoing series. Without doing any math, I'm pretty sure Simone therefore has Dixon beat in terms of pages of BOP comics scripted, as well as time on the franchise, but Dixon deserves a ton of credit for the franchise, credit he doesn't always get. With original editor Jordan B. Gorfinkel, Dixon created the Birds of Prey (if not the two individual stars), and capitalized on Kim Yale and John Ostrander's transformation of the former Batgirl into hacker and information broker Oracle to make Barbara Gordon a key player in the Batman franchise and the wider DC Universe (even joining the Justice League for a while).

So now, finally, the first Birds of Prey comics are collected, giving a new generation of fans (and those of us who missed them the first time around) a chance to read them, and giving Dixon and his collaborators a spotlight they missed out on back in the day by virtue of the trade collection market not really existing in its current form (not to mention, one hopes, plenty of well-deserved royalties). Dixon's earliest Birds of Prey comics were published previously in a pair of trades, from 2002 and 2003, which collected everything in this volume, plus the first six issues of the ongoing. Those are out of print now, and this seems like the start of a concentrated effort to collect the pre-Simone comics...as well as being part of a revival of interest in Dixon's '90s Bat-office work, when one takes into consideration these new volumes will be released alongside the Robin collections.

So, what do we have here?

Dixon wrote all of the above save for the 18-page "Birds of a Feather" story, which was the cover story in Showcase '96 #3; that one is written by Gorfinkel, who edited the rest of the books in this collection and who is credited as a co-creator of the Birds of Prey team, (at least according to Wikipedia).

As for the art, there are quite a few more cooks in the kitchen. Gary Frank, Stefano Raffaele and Dick Giordano and an all but unrecognizable Greg Land each pencil one one-shot apiece (Seriously, you should check out Land's art in this; if you know it's Land ahead of time, you can kind of see hints of the Land of the last decade or so in it, but he appears to have actually drawn-drawn his art back then, and it looks perfectly fine). The four-issue miniseries Manhunt features pencils by Matt Haley, with a couple different inkers and, on the final issue, layouts by Sal Buscema. The Showcase team-up featured layouts by Jennifer Graves, an artist of whom I know almost nothing, aside from the fact that she drew at least one of my favorite issues of Robin (and that I wished she was the ongoing artist) and finishes by Stan Woch. 

Of these, the first special is likely to be of greatest interest, as it shows the origin of the Black Canary/Oracle team-up, or at least their first time working together in a book of their own. It also marks a major turning point in the history of the Black Canary character, as she goes from being a supporting character in Green Arrow and Justice League comics to being the co-star of what would end up being a long-running series. At the beginning of the issue, she's still rocking her classic look, complete with fishnets and blonde wig. A few pages in, she decides to dye her hair blonde and suits up in a new costume that Oracle has designed for her.

Canary is in a rut when we meet her in Seattle, and Oracle not only recruits her for a mission (via answering machine; this was the '90s, remember), but also acts as her life coach, giving her new direction and new duds.

The plot, like most of Dixon's at the time, is pretty boilerplate, action movie type stuff, with little of the character work that would go into his Batman or Robin comics. There's a shady businessman who is supposedly helping various leaders of third world countries who keep falling prey to terrorists...a group he is in cahoots with. For protection, he has hired Lynx of the Ghost Dragons, a Dixon creation who first appeared in the original Robin miniseries (and a character I always liked; although she got killed during the bad old days of "War Games"-era Batman comics). He takes Canary on as an additional bodyguard as well, and, naturally, she foils his schemes.

More so than any other comic in this collection, Frank's artwork plays up the cheesecake aspects of Black Canary (and the other female characters). There is a lot of sexy art in this book, with Canary in various states of undress...although we should probably keep in mind that her superhero costume was basically a state of undress. When she takes off her wig and jacket to take a cab or go to an airport as Dinah Lance rather than Black Canary, she's basically just wearing lingerie and boots. 

The threats of the other stories are similarly non-super; they may not be exactly realistic, but they're the sort you might find in an action movie rather than a superhero comic. They're rarely imaginative, but Dixon was always pretty adept at making up realistic-ish, generic bad guy types with bad guy plots. 

There's an international criminal and con man with an elaborate plan to seek refuge in an incredibly inaccessible land of bad guys hiding out, there's a cola company-sponsored revolution in Santa Prisca (home country of Bane!) and Dinah finds herself running from the Ukranian mob while Barbara deals with muggers and home invaders. It's not until the very last issue in the collection that we see any real supervillains, in the form of Spellbinder III and, in one panel, Blockbuster (at that point reinvented to basically be the Wilson Fisk of the DC Universe). 

The collection's cover shows the trio that would form the heart of the team during Simone's run, but the stories inside revolve around the somewhat strained relationship of Black Canary and Oracle (who never meet one another at any point in these stories). There are plenty of guest-stars though. The Showcase Story has a Canary teamed up with very badly dressed Lois Lane, Manhunt has Canary teaming with Huntress and Catwoman (and, in the climax, fighting Lady Shiva) and, in the final story, Batgirl Barbara Gordon appears, along with pretty much Batman's entire rogue's gallery, but only via illusion (Um, spoiler alert). 

These guest-stars highlight what would become a hallmark of Birds of Prey, that what was originally a partnership would become, eventually, a friendship and then a constantly expanding and retracting team, in which characters that couldn't command their own monthly series (at least, not for long) would find the strength in numbers to do just that. Which actually reflects the in-comic storylines too, since Canary and Oracle need each other, and other occasional partners, to accomplish things they can't manage solo.

None of these are really great comics, although there are things to recommend them (Particularly good art here or there, easily accessible stories, etc). The greatest pleasure the collection offers, really, is in reading (or re-reading) these rather basic, run-of-the-mill action adventure comics with the knowledge of what they lead to in the future.


*Sorry, Everyone Involved With The New 52 Suicide Squad, but that book has been just this side of unreadable since it launched, and no amount of creative team changes have been able to change that so far. In your defense, the New 52 reboot sort of hobbled the general appeal of the concept, I realize, because rather than allowing you guys to pick and choose great and/or expendable super-villains and bad-guys from throughout DC history, you were basically stuck with brand-new, history-less characters that had absolutely nothing in common with their previous iterations other than their codenames

Meanwhile...

This week at Robot 6 I reviewed Batman: Earth One Volume Two. I did not like the first volume, like, at all, but found this one to be a great improvement. It was one of those books where I plan on reading a portion of it before turning in for the night, and then end up reading the whole damn thing because I find the plot engaging enough that I can't put it down.

It's basically Geoff Johns and Gary Frank's version of "Batman: Year One," only with a higher page count (between the first two volumes, they've gotta be closing in on 400 pages by now), and in this one much of Batman's energy is focused on fighting this new villain called The Riddler (So, perhaps unfortunately for Johns and Frank, their new book is practically begging to be compared to Scott Snyder, Greg Capullo and company's "Zero Year" arc).

I got really excited when The Riddler first-appeared, in this panel:

They keep him off-panel for a long time, and that is the first look at any part of him. For a while I thought they might be giving us a mustachioed Riddler, which means a John Astin-style Riddler, which means awesome. Sadly, that was not the case. This Riddler is just unshaven, rather than sporting a handsome mustache.

There were two scenes that more than made up for my disappointment in that matter, however. The first involves Alfred, who here is basically the Alfred from Beware The Batman, but with a goatee, telling Bruce Wayne that he needs to start wearing body armor. Bruce glibly responds, "Do you know what body armor says about a guy? It says he needs body armor."

Nicely put, Batman, and I couldn't agree more. I hate, hate, hate the over-armored look of Batman that seems so predominate these days, from the suits Christian Bale wore in the last cycle of Batman films, to that of the Batman in the various Arkham video games, to The New 52 costume. Frank's design actually looks a little more armored than my ideal Batman costume–what with all the seams and what I guess are actually pads, rather than plates–but I do like the sentiment that Batman doesn't need armor, because he's so good he's not going to be shot and stabbed constantly. I'm cool with some thing armor covering his torso under his shirt to block unexpected gunfire, and maybe a reinforced cowl, but I don't like the idea of a bullet proof Batman–Bale's Batman wearing what looks like 80 pounds of armor and still having his ninja-like ability to appear and disappear just snapped my suspension of disbelief. For superhero costume design, simpler is always better, if you ask me.

The last panel on this page was my favorite bit though:

I love the idea of Batman as a guy who's just really, really into bats, and putting bat-symbols on absolutely everyting, like some sort of obsessive-compulsive branding exercise. Just as much as I like the idea that everyone else thinks it's a weird quirk of his, and just don't agree that putting bat symbols on everything is, like, the coolest thing ever.

On a couple of Earths of interest:

Marcus To

The only new comic released today that I've read so far this week is The Multiversity: Guidebook #1, which was a huge surprise in that it contained a story just a few pages shorter than those of the other Multiversity books, contained some 35 extra pages detailing the Map of the Multiverse and these little profiles of 45 of the 52 Earths (seven of them are "Unknown" Earths at this point.

These were surprisingly fun, in large part because of how familiar so many of them were, and that the editors seemed to do a pretty decent job of at least making an attempt to match the settings and characters in each entry with the artist most associated with them.

So, for example, the Vampire Earth derived from Doug Moench/Kelley Jones trilogy of Vampire Batman books is drawn by Kelley Jones (I guess one reason Superman should wear shorts is to give Jones a good idea where to start and stop with his leg muscles).

Or, for another example, Darwyn Cooke draws the Earth assigned to his New Fronteir.

DC doesn't get a lot of the ideal candidates to draw these Earths. Alex Ross doesn't draw Earth-Kingdom Come, Dan Brereton doesn't draw Earth-Thrillkiller, Alcatena doesn't draw Earth-Detective Comics Annual #7, J.H. Williams III doesn't draw Earth-Justice Riders and so on, but there's a fair amount of very good art in this section, and flipping to and from the credits page at the back of the book is one of the many (many, many, many) pleasures the book offers.

The Earth I was probably most surprised to see was Earth-1:

So I guess that explains why those Earth One original graphic novels are all sub-titled "Earth One"—it is the universe within the current iteration of The Multiverse on which they take place. As for the main DCU, the Earth I've been calling "Earth-New 52"...? That's Earth-0, or "New Earth," as it was called post-Identity Crisis.

The entry, illustrated by Batman: Earth One artist Gary Frank, explicitly notes that the various characters all exist in the same world (There's been no indication in the books published so far that this was the case, and all three seemed to stand alone and divorced form one another). Also of interest is the inclusion of Wonder Woman, in the text and in the illustration, as she hasn't been introduced yet. It was announced that Greg Rucka would be working on a Wonder Woman: Earth One book, and then it was announced that Morrison would be doing it instead, but the title of Morrison's original graphic novel about Wonder Woman has since changed its title, losing the "Earth One" sub-title and, one assumes, its designation within the line and, one also assumes, its setting on this Earth. But one shouldn't really assume anything, should one? I, for example, assumed those books were not set on a new Earth-1 (Is it of interest that the parallel worlds that the main DCU of Earth-0 have had the most interaction with so far have been Earth-2 and Earth-3, rather than their closest neighbor, Earth-1...?)

Review: Shazam! Vol. 1

There's a very telling scene about midway through Shazam!, Geoff Johns and Gary Frank's retelling of the story of C.C. Beck and Bill Parker's first-wave superhero for the mass media adaptation hungry 21st century comic book market, when the young protagonist Billy Batson comes face to face with the wizard who gives him the magic word that enables him to transform into the caped strongman Captain Marvel.

In the original, Golden Age story, Billy Batson is a homeless orphan boy lead by a mysterious stranger to a subway tunnel where he catches an equally mysterious magical train to the sanctum of the ancient wizard Shazam, who awards the boy with the powers of six heroic patrons and makes him his champion.

Johns' version is infinitely more cynical. When Batson, a sarcastic 15-year-old foster child appears before the now nameless wizard (who he at first thinks may be a child molester [?!]), it's as part of a sort of magical abduction experience the wizard has been repeating for decades, in a fruitless attempt to find a human being who is pure good, and thus worthy of the fantastic powers of Shazam.

Batson tells the wizard off, steamrolling the wizard's insistence that there is such a thing as a pure good person:

I'm only fifteen and I already know there's no such thing as a pure good person...People are horrible. They disappoint you. They let you down. I've spent my life learning that...Good people get swallowed up. They get taken advantage of. They disappear...You're searching for something that doesn't really exist.

It's a very cynical take on the characters, and yet it's the very heart of what proves to be an important, even pivotal scene. Not only does Billy insist that there's no such thing as a purely good person, and that good can't survive in the long in the real world, but he actually convinces the wizard with this argument, and, out of desperation—a very powerful threat is coming, and only a magically empowered champion stands a chance of saving the world—the wizard grants Billy the powers of Shazam.

"I have no other choice, do I?" the wizard says to himself, "There's no more time." And he therefore reluctantly settles for Billy Batson, seeing that the boy at least has the potential to be good, which is better than nothing.

Is the scene told a bit more naturally, and with some greater dramatic sophistication then the storybook-simple Golden Age version? Sure. Is it more realistic? Of course. But it also introduces moral relevance into a milieu where it rests very uncomfortably. Because Captain Marvel was so incredibly popular in the 1940s Golden Age before disappearing for most of the Silver and Bronze Age of comics, the character and his stories saturated the medium for a while, but they never went through the growing-up period that all the similarly prevalent characters and comics did, and, as a result of that,  and of various creators glomming on to the idea of the character's secret identity being that of a child rather than a man or woman (and, I'd argue, the basic fairytale-like elements of the story), the franchise has never really been able to successfully shake its aura of childishness and old-fashioned-ness.

That is not a negative, although it is generally treated by DC Comics as if it were, which is why the company so very rarely tells Captain Marvel stories, but is always trying to reinvent the character.

Johns, an apparent fan who has written the character extensively in the past (although not as much as he's written his evil opposite, Black Adam), and artist Gary Frank go full-throttle in their attempts to update Captain Marvel, make him more distinct from DC's other caped strongman superhero and make the character's story more "realistic," and that, naturally enough, leads to a lot of rather cynical, extremely calculated and often quite uncomfortable creative choices.

But, it's well worth noting, this is not as bad as one might expect a Geoff Johns-written, New 52-line reinvention of Captain Marvel to be. As much as Johns and his higher-ups at DC have changed the character—including renaming him "Shazam" instead of "Captain Marvel" (tweaking the rules of his transformations in the process), giving him a new, heavily-redesigned costume and assigning him the DC Universe magic "beat" to patrol—this isn't as godawful as, say, Countdown's dark versions of Mr. Mxyzptlk or, more relevantly, Mary Marvel, or all the gory, horror and war movie motifs and aesthetics that Johns brough to the Green Lantern franchise (Which, to be fair, did transform the once-struggling Green Lantern book into a whole line of incredibly successful monthly comic books;  I might not always like Johns' creative choices, but I suppose there's no arguing with financial success in the mainstream comics industry).

In other words then, while Shazam's many reconfigurations of pre-existing elements may be off-putting—I was struck, for example, by how much a certain section of the book reminded me of Superior, Mark Millar and Leinil Yu's Marvel-published, creator-owned story about a 12-year-old boy who becomes Supermanior—it could have been much, much worse.

Despite the the high-profile creative team, and DC's burning need to keep somewhere close to 52 monthlies in print all the time, the publisher adopted a strange strategy for releasing Shazam: Rather than as a miniseries or ongoing monthly, or as an Earth-One graphic novel, where its thorough reinvention and film/TV pitch-nature would seem more at home, it appeared as a back-up strip in the Johns-written Justice League comic book, occasionally taking over the pages of Justice League altogether.

It was front-loaded with some of the more off-putting elements, so that I was scared away from the story by some of the images in the very first, short installment.

There was the new costume, with its hood, glowing chest-emblem and constant aura of lightning...

There was the new Dr. Sivana, a big, brawny tough guy rather than the wizened little old man, no bigger than the child Billy...

(A few installments in, Sivana gets a lightning bolt-shaped scar over one eye, allowing him to "see magic.")

And there was Billy himself, a smart-ass who calls a nice young couple who want to adopt him a "a couple of idiots" as soon as they're out of earshot...

That was more than enough to have me recoil from Justice League in dread, and I never checked back in with Johns and Frank's Shazam serial until it was collected, and could be read in the whole form it was created to be experienced as (That is, it reads like an original graphic novel, not a collection of a serially published back-up strip).

There would be more similar attempts to make the Marvel Family and villains more realistic and/or bad-ass as the series progresses, like the new look of the former Seven Deadly Enemies of Man, now called The Seven Deadly Sins...

And Mr. Tawky Tawny, who is no longer a talking tiger who comes to America to join polite society, but is a zoo tiger Billy feels a certain amount of affection for and, at one point, gifts with Shazam powers.

Here is the story of Johns and Frank's Shazam, which really does read like a comic book version of a PG-13 superhero movie based on the Captain Marvel character (and reads better when regarded as such, I think; compared to the characters as they appear in the recent The Multiversity: Thunderworld Adventures, everything here seems wrong-headed, but as a self-contained Captain Marvel/Shazam story, it works just fine).

Scientist Dr. Sivana is researching magical abductions in an attempt to track down the fabled Rock of Eternity, in order to discover and harness real magic, which he believes can help save his family where science has failed (As to what's going on with his family, that's not detailed, and would presumably be a plot point if and when Johns and Frank continue their storyline).

Meanwhile in Philadelphia, unpleasant young man Billy Batson has conned a trusting couple into taking him in as a foster child, which would make him their sixth.

They already foster white kids Mary and Freddy (who are of course the secret identities of Mary Marvel and Captain Marvel Jr. in the pre-New 52, original stories; this version of Freddy has long, blonde hair for some reason). There are three "new" characters, too: Smart Asian stereotype Eugene, chubby, dumb Hispanic kid Pedro, and an effervescent young black girl named Darla. I say "new," because the three of them were all introduced during Johns' Flashpoint story, in which the six kids each possessed one of the attributes of Shazam, and could combine to form the composite hero Captain Thunder (ala Captain Planet).

Billy doesn't get along too well with his new family, and they don't care for his shitty attitude either, but they start to warm to him a little bit at school the next day, when he defends them from bullies...sons of a rich, powerful grown-up bully who seems straight from central casting, who he's not afraid of:

Sivana and Billy's storylines begin to intersect when Sivana's research leads him to the Iraqi tomb of Black Adam, who he releases. The wizard summons Billy to the Rock of Eternity, and they have their little fight about whether there's such a thing as a really good person or not, with the wizard giving Billy the word and the powers.

At first, Billy and Freddy use their powers for fun and games (this is the bit that reminded me of Superior, a stretch of which involves the newly-empowered 12-year-old protagonist in an adult's body abusing his powers with his best friend), but things eventually get real when Black Adam, Sivana and the Seven Deadly Sins come to town, tearing the place apart while searching for Billy. Billy holds the rest of the wizard's power, you see, and Black Adam wants all of the Shazam powers for himself.

Will Billy do the right thing and fight Black Adam and his evil entourage, or will he stand down and let the villains destroy everything?

Well, it is a superhero comic, so naturally the day will be saved via violence.

Near the climax, Johns and Frank have Billy sharing his powers with his five siblings.

Mary Marvel and Captain Marvel Jr. both appear, although they don't have codenames and obviously won't use those ones if they ever get them (although Freddy does call himself "King Shazam" in one panel), both wearing costumes that look a bit like New 52 versions of their original ones. Pedro gets a beard and green costume, apparently turning into Marvel's Hercules. Darla gets a purple costume and Euguene gets a black one. Who has what powers isn't entirely clear, but Darla has super-speed and Eugene can now talk to machines (?). Additionally, everyone seems to age a little by the transformations, but to various degrees. Billy and Pedro are completely unrecognizable, for example, while Darla looks like she only gains a year or four. Mary and Freddy, who used to retain their child-like forms when they gained their powers, now also age, but their transformations don't render them as unrecognizable as Billy and Pedro's transformations do (As weird as the color schemes and some of these choices may be, I suppose this is a much more palatable take on the Lieutenant Marvel concept than Tall Marvel, Fat Marvel and Hill Marvel would have been).

After the climactic battle, things settle into a status quo that, were this the film it reads like, would be laying groundwork for the sequel.

Black Adam is killed off (not sure how he appeared in Forever Evil, exactly), The Seven Deadly Sins flee to appear in Trinity War and Trinity of Sin: Pandora, the kids and various townspeople all laugh at that one asshole's penis...

...Sivana has been shrunken and shriveled by his exposure to magic, leaving him in a more familiar form, and Billy decides he kinda likes his new family after all.

Oh, and on the last two panels, Sivana meets Captain Marvel's other greatest archenemy, a talking caterpillar who introduces himself as Mr. Mind.

For all its faults in terms of conception, it's difficult to argue with its execution; even Frank's designs and artwork stand out as head-and-shoulders above the bulk of The New 52 line (especially during those first two years or so, when this was published, prior to some of the more interesting hires of late). Whatever one might think of the book's goals, it meets and fulfills them successfully, and works perfectly well on its own terms.

As a longtime reader and fan of Captain Marvel, this all feels wrong to me, an attempt to fix something that isn't broken, and it all feels extremely awkward when considered as part of the larger DC Universe as it currently stands, but, if you can divorce the book itself from its publishing history and from the shared universe in which it is apparently set, it's an accomplished, even interesting take on Captain Marvel.

That is, it's a pretty good Elseworlds story, and would have been a great addition to DC's Earth One line of graphic novels.

Shazam gives it two thumbs-up, but then, he would.

Let's talk at some length about Batman: Earth One

Hey look, it's "The Birthday Boy," the brand-new, original villain that writer Geoff Johns and pencil artist Gary Frank created during the course of their very, very strange Batman: Earth One graphic novel, which is maybe kinda sorta supposed to be a more realistic take on Batman for a new generation...?

I'm not sure what they were going for with the project, to be honest, and what they ended up with is a pretty terrible comic book about how Batman sucks and about how torture, gun violence and lethal force are the only way to beat the bad guys, featuring highly competent but remarkably unremarkable artwork for such an out-of-left-field Batman project.

Here, I reviewed it at Robot 6, if you'd like to read a more thorough (but spoiler-filled!) review of of the original graphic novel (For alternate, superior reviews, I'd re-recommend Sean T. Collins' The Comics Journal review, which couches criticism of the work within a framing device taking up the various "What the hell is this thing, and why is this thing?" aspects of the project, as well as Tom Bondurant's more straight, upbeat and spoiler-free review for Robot 6).

There were a few other things I think worth pointing out, even if they didn't fit in a proper review. I will number them.

1.) First and foremost, look at this lady's breasts:

They appear as part of a two-page splash in which Batman, on what seems to be his second night on the job, accidentally crashes through a large glass window and into a gala party thrown by Mayor Oswald Cobblepot.

Frank and inker Jonathan Sibal (who, for some reason, didn't get his name on the cover along with Johns and Frank) just drew the hell out of those breasts, didn't they? Even the colorist did maybe the best work of the volume on her breasts.

They are also, refreshingly, not the exact same size and shape as all of the other breasts in the book. This particular splash page has a good half-dozen pairs of breasts in it, on the young and old, stuffed into revealing evening gowns, and yet Frank manages to draw several different sizes and shapes of breasts throughout the book. Good job, Gary Frank! (If you don't read many superhero comics, let me assure you that this is actually very, very rare within the genre).

This image of this lady's breasts is by far the best part of Batman: Earth One and, after that page passes, it's all downhill.

2.) Earth-One Barbara Gordon, perhaps the very worst-dressed young librarian in a big American city, is wearing a yellow long-sleeved T shirt or possibly sweater (Frank and Sibal aren't great with textures) during the climax of the book (That's her at The Birthday Boy's feet at the top of the post, by the way). In that scene, she is menaced by a colorful, psychotic serial killer who attacks her to get at her father, James Gordon. Kind of like in Batman: The Killing Joke, in which she is menaced by a colorful, psychotic serial killer who attacks her to get at her father, James Gordon.

And what was she wearing in The Killing Joke?

Yellow. Basically Barbara Gordon should stay away from yellow, is what I'm saying.

3.) One of the most shocking moments in the book was a throwaway line in a single panel. Check it out:

He said "asshole"! In a Batman comic! Can they do that, without the stupid "@#$%" or a black redaction bar or something...? That's crazy. I've seen Johns use "the A-word" in his superhero comics before, but I'm having trouble thinking of an occassion where it was the compound word "asshole." I'm sure it must have happened in some Batman comic at some point before, probably one written by Frank Miller, but I can't think of an example off the top of my head.

I'm fine with it, of course. It's actually one of the least offensive things in the book. I'm just surprised at all, given how Johns and DC usually use extreme gore, violence and allusions to sexual violence to give their juvenalia the patina of maturity, eschewing nudity and PG-13 language. And Marvel Comics goes to great, stupid lengths to have their characters swearing like sailors all the time wihout ever actually printing a swear word on the page.

This particular book, if you're wondering, isn't rated. Or, if it is, I didn't see the rating on it, but maybe I didn't look hard enough.

3.5) Did they use the word "asshole" in any of the Nolan movies...? I can't remember hearing any swearing in any of them, but I haven't rewatched the first two since they were in theaters, and I'm even a few weeks removed from having seen Dark Knight Rises at this point, meaning I remember very little dialogue not spoken by Bane (except for Batman's "Where's the DETONATOR?!" freak out, which recalled Nicolas Cage's "How'd it get burned?" dialogue in The Wikcer Man, only much, much louder and phone sex operator-esque)

4.) I kind of liked how Lucius Fox was portrayed in this, as Batman's gadget man and own personal Q, just as he was in the Nolan films, only here he's a much younger man, and thus doesn't have the fatherly relationship with Bruce Wayne that Morgan Freeman's portrayal of the character did.

I like that version of Fox in general, mostly because it gives the character some agency, rather than just being the guy Bruce Wayne has to talk to when someone decides to do a story involving Wayne's business life or finances.

I haven't read any of the post-New 52boot Batman comics yet (I'm trade-waiting a couple), but I do hope they made comics Fox more like movie Fox. If you're going to reboot the DCU, you might as well adopt what works best about the characters in other media, right? Especially the other media products that are almost universally embraced? (Of course, comparing the "New 52" comics to the DC characters that have appeared in the many successful cartoons from Batman: The Animated Series to Young Justice, it's pretty clear the guys making DC's pre-New 52 comics weren't exactly looking outside of their medium for inspiration on making more widely appealing versions of the characters).

5.) For the life of me I can't fathom why DC decided to push this particular book the week Dark Knight Rises came out with all those free preview comics, as it is so radically divorced from the "real" Batman of all those other Batman comics DC publishes every single month and from the Batman in the movies. If the idea was to introduce readers to Batman, they might as well have handed out free reprints of Batman: Year 100 #1 or All-Star Batman and Robin, The Boy Wonder #1 or Batman: Dark Knight of the Round Table #1. Hell, any of those at least get the bit about Batman being a basically stand-up guy who wants justice and has a strict code of conduct that forbids him from shooting The Penguin out of a window with a big-ass shotgun.

I suppose it has something to do with them wanting to tempt folks into buying the very expensive trade instead of a $3 or $4 pamphlet (Although, why not the first chapter of Batman: Year One, or something with Bane or Catwoman in it), and/or to give Chief Creative Officer Geoff Johns a huge promotional push he doesn't really need, but it seems like trying to sell the "real" Batman who stars in a good half-dozen New 52 monthlies would have been a better way to go.