Shazam! (2019)

Shazam! (2019): Shazam (aka Captain Marvel) created by Bill Parker and C.C. Beck; written by Henry Gayden and Darren Lemke; directed by David F. Sandberg; starring Zachary Levi (Shazam), Mark Strong (Sivana), Asher Angel (Billy Batson), Jack Dylan Grazer (Freddy Freeman), and Djimon Honsou (Wizard): 

Shockingly enjoyable movie about the original Fawcett Comics Captain Marvel (ie. THE Captain Marvel), moved to the present day and made somewhat goofier than the great 1940's version whose adventures were no worse than second-best in terms of superheroes in the 1940's (Jack Cole's Plastic Man was first; Will Eisner's Spirit didn't have super-powers).

Shazam is an acronym for Solomon (Wisdom), Hercules (Strength), Atlas (Stamina), Zeus (Power), Achilles (Invulnerability), and Mercury (Speed). Well, when it comes to Captain Marvel (now Shazam), anyway -- Mary Marvel and Black Adam, to name two, have the same acronym but different names from mythology.

The whole thing is a 'low-budget' by superhero standards ($90 million) movie aimed solidly at mid-teens. Billy Batson is invested by the wizard Shazam with the powers of, well, Shazam because DC gave up on using 'Captain Marvel' because they didn't trademark it back in the 1950's or 1960's. Shazam is now Earth's defense against magical menaces, sort of a jollier Dr. Strange. 

Billy Batson, a sort-of orphan, has to learn to accept his supportive new foster family led by Freddy Freeman, once a disabled newsboy in the 1940's and now, not working, just as Billy no longer works as a radio host. Child labour laws, am I right, guys?

Zachary Levi is the result of Billy saying 'Shazam.' In the comics, he was generally written as a sort of adult version of Billy with super-powers -- they didn't share a consciousness. Taking a cue from Big, Shazam now possesses Billy's 13-year-old consciousness in a super-powered adult body. Hijinks ensue as Billy and Freddy test out the beer-buying powers of Shazam, among other things.

Much revisionism is heaped on the villain of this piece, Sivana, originally a diminutive mad scientist and now a large, imposing Mark Strong wielding magical powers derived from long-time Shazam foes The Seven Deadly Sins. And I don't mean the Traveling Wilburys song! But Strong always makes an, um, strong villain. 

I'm not a huge fan of all the revisionism heaped on Captain Mar... er, Shazam... in the recent Shazam miniseries by Geoff Johns and Gary Frank. And all of those revisions seem to get info-dumped into this movie, especially over the last 45 minutes. Oh, well. Things play a lot jollier here than in that miniseries, and Billy is much more likable.

The whole thing is nonetheless light and entertaining and often quite visually inventive. It's clearly marked throughout as part of the DC Movie Universe, and the end credits foreground this. Superman does cameo in the live-action stuff, but not Henry Cavill either because he refused or because DC is pivoting away from the dark days of David Goyer and Zack Snyder's DC movies to something more earnest and light. 

Hopefully being freed of the demands of an origin story will allow a second Shazam movie to soar and not crash. There's also a brief (unnamed) reference to the 'first,' fallen Shazam champion, Egypt's Black Adam. Dwayne Johnson has been attached to a Black Adam movie for years; the box-office success of Shazam! seems to have jump-started that movie, or at least a Black Adam role in the next Shazam! film. Recommended.

Captain Marvel (2019)

Captain Marvel (2019): based on characters created by Stan Lee, Arnold Drake, Jack Kirby, Gene Colan, and many others; written by Nicole Perlman, Meg LeFauve, Anna Boden, Ryan Fleck, and Geneva Robertson-Dworet; directed by Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden; starring Brie Larson as Carol Danvers /Captain Marvel, Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, Ben Mendelsohn as Talos, Jude Law as Yon-Rogg, Annette Bening as Supreme Intelligence/Mar-Vell, Gemma Chan as Minn-Erva, Lee Pace as Ronan, Mckenna Grace as Young Carol Danvers, Djimon Hounsou as Korath, and Clark Gregg as Agent Phil Coulson:

What's weird about Captain Marvel is that it's more like a Joss Whedon project than Whedon's two Avengers movies. Relentlessly light in tone, Captain Marvel is basically a buddy comedy featuring Carol 'Captain Marvel' Danvers and a young, mid-1990's Nick Fury, played by a CGI-youthanized Samuel L. Jackson. 

Disney seems to have spent all the de-aging CGI money on Jackson, as a de-aged Agent Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg) often looks like a nightmare from the Uncanny Valley.

This is the first Captain Marvel in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, though the Carol Danvers Captain Marvel is the third or fourth so-named hero in Marvel history (and not the original Captain Marvel -- that is the 'Shazam'-uttering Fawcett Comics hero soon to appear in a movie called Shazam; after DC acquired the rights to that Captain from Fawcett, they forgot to trademark the name, thus leading to Marvel debuting their then-male Captain Marvel in the late 1960's).

It's a mostly fun, light snack. It's overly long in the climax department, as pretty much every blockbuster now is these days, relentlessly ticking off items on a Checklist of Closure. Brie Larson is fine as the good Captain, though she's not given much to work with beyond a surface jokiness. Jackson seems to be delighted to be doing comedy work, as do Jude Law as Marvel alien Kree mentor Yon-Rogg and Ben Mendelsohn as the alien Skrull leader Talos. Recommended.

Wonder Woman: War of the Gods

Wonder Woman: War of the Gods (1991/ Collected 2017): written by George Perez; illustrated by George Perez, Jill Thompson, Cynthia Martin, Russell Braun, Romeo Tanghal, and others: War of the Gods was DC Comics' company-wide crossover for 1991 and one of its best from the first decade of company-wide crossovers that kicked off with 1985's Crisis on Infinite Earths. And as with Crisis, writer-artist George Perez is a major component.

As 1991 was the 50th anniversary of the first appearance of Wonder Woman, War of the Gods also served as a de facto anniversary celebration, centered as it was upon Wonder Woman, the Amazons, WW-foe Circe, and the Amazon island of Themyscira (aka Paradise Island). 

George Perez had been writing and/or illustrating Wonder Woman ever since her series rebooted post-Crisis in 1986. War of the Gods would also serve as a farewell to Perez -- his problems with DC's low-key anniversary acknowledgement of WW's 50th helped cause him to leave Wonder Woman with the issue that served as an epilogue to War of the Gods.

A lot of people help out on the artwork here, including two pioneering female artists when it came to mainstream superhero comics -- Cynthia Martin and Jill Thompson. They're very good. They also follow Perez's lead in giving Wonder Woman a realistic physique. Which is to say, she's not top-heavy. In mainstream superhero comics, that's something of a Mission Statement then and now. You can sort of chart sexism in superhero comics by the size of Wonder Woman's bust.

War of the Gods sees the witch Circe incite a war among various pantheons of gods. Initially, this involves the Greek and Roman gods. Initially, the similarity of the Greek and Roman gods also creates confusion as to who is who and why and what and what-have-you. Then other gods from the Hindu and Egyptian and Babylonian and assorted other pantheons start wreaking havoc on Earth. It's a good thing Earth has superheroes! If you've ever wanted to see Aquaman defeat the Babylonian demon Tiamat, this is the comic for you.

Wonder Woman leads the battle against Circe, with Earth's other heroes taking their cues from her. Perez and the other artists do a solid and often inspired job of depicting all these mythological battles and weird dimensionnal realms, including another take on Perez's M.C. Escher-influenced Olympus, the war-god Ares' realm of Areopagus, and the cosmic burial ground of of the dead Titan Cronus.

Still, this is a company-wide crossover, so many other heroes are involved. And even with the 'company-wide' part trimmed to just the miniseries and issues of Wonder Woman, things get pretty crowded. Omitting all the other issues that tied into the War of the Gods sometimes means 'not crowded enough,' though. Some events that clearly occupied entire issues of Superman or Justice League get only passing mention in this volume. 

I suppose there may some day be a War of the Gods Omnibus edition that compiles all the stories. For now, we're left wondering why, to cite one example, Firestorm is given such a major introduction in this volume before going on to do, um, nothing. I assume he had a pivotal role in one of the tie-ins. Or maybe not. Thanks for coming out, Firestorm!

There's some fairly typical Continuity Wankiness here, especially when it comes to Shazam. Why do the names that make up the acronym Shazam come from Greek, Roman, and Biblical figures? Well, now you will know! 

And the answer isn't 'Because they start with the right letters?' No explanation is given for Mary Marvel's different set of gods and legends, but I'm not sure Mary Marvel was in DC continuity in 1991. Hoo ha! 

Three characters from Crisis on Infinite Earths -- Harbinger, Pariah, and Lady Quark -- also make appearances here so as to tie in the universe-shaking events to the multiverse-shaking events of that series. Hey, it's always nice to see Lady Quark and her weird costume.

In all this is an enjoyable, sometimes choppy volume, that choppiness coming from the missing tie-in issues. I suppose if you're not going to reprint all the issues for the sake of brevity, you could always insert text pages explaining, 'Meanwhile, in Superman this happened, and in JLA that...'. But it's nice to see Wonder Woman figure so prominently in a crossover. Recommended.

5-Star

Starman Volume 4: Times Past: written by James Robinson; illustrated by Teddy Kristiansen, Craig Hamilton, John Watkiss, Russ Heath, Matt Smith, J.H. Williams III, Lee Weeks, Phil Jiminez and others (1995-2000; collected 2001): Robinson and company tell tales of the history of the various Starmen who've borne that name over the decades, from Golden Age hero Ted Knight to his son, and eponymous current Starman, Jack Knight. Amoral occasional hero, occasional villain The Shade narrates in a series of prose pieces. A nice gateway volume for the series, and an eclectic mix of artists. Recommended.

Starman Volume 5: Infernal Devices: written by James Robinson; illustrated by Tony Harris, Mark Buckingham, Steve Yeowell, Wade Von Grawbadger, and others (1997-98; collected 2001): Starman Jack Knight must save Opal City from a truly mad bomber and a couple of super-villain henchmen. And he's got a new girlfriend, Sadie, whom he's totally in love with -- and who has her own secret reasons for first meeting him. Thankfully, new heroes are rising in Opal City to help out. Or new-old heroes, anyway. And the mystery of eternally resurrecting monster Solomon Grundy, who's been a great guy in this incarnation, is finally revealed in all its weirdness. Recommended.

Starman Volume 6: To Reach the Stars: written by James Robinson and David S. Goyer; illustrated by Gary Erskine, Gene Ha, Peter Krause, Steve Yeowell, and Tony Harris (1998; collected 2001): With his girlfriend Sadie's secret revealed, Jack Knight contemplates a trip into space in search of a lost and until now presumed dead hero of the 1980's and early 1990's. But first, we get a team-up of Starmen now and during World War Two with Fawcett Comics heroes Captain Marvel and Bulletman. And Bulletman is awesome. Also, he must have an incredibly hard head beneath that bullet-shaped helmet. Recommended.

Starman Volume 7: A Starry Knight: written by James Robinson and David S. Goyer; illustrated by Peter Snejberg, Keith Champagne, and Tony Harris (1998-99; collected 2002): Starman Jack Knight and former Starman Mikaal, a blue-skinned alien who fought crime during the disco era, take to outer space with the help of anti-hero The Shade and the Justice League on the basis of Starman's fiancee Sadie's belief that her brother, another hero formerly known as Starman, still lives somewhere out there, despite having been seen dying in battle with the dark god Eclipso several years earlier. Along the way, Mikaal and Jack will meet up with DC's space-faring heroes such as Adam Strange, old frenemies like Solomon Grundy, and an entire planet terraformed by a space-travelling Swamp Thing back during the 1980's. Meanwhile, back home in Opal City, something dark is rising. Recommended.

Starman Volume 8: The Stars My Destination: written by James Robinson and David S. Goyer; illustrated by Peter Snejberg, Keith Champagne, Stephen Sadowski, John McCrea, and Tony Harris (1999; collected 2003): Starmen new and old team up with assorted science-fictional comic heroes to overthrow a murderous dictator -- and solve the mystery of whether or not fallen Starman Will Payton still lives. Meanwhile, back in Opal City, things are starting to look very, very bad for everybody. Opal needs Starman Jack Knight back! Recommended.

The Mightiest Man in the Universe

The Shazam! Archives Volume 3, written by Bill Parker, C.C. Beck and Rod Reed, illustrated by C.C. Beck, Pete Costanza, George Tuska and Mac Raboy (1941-42; collected 2002): Another dandy volume of Golden-Age Captain Marvel (Shazam!) stories, though a bit light on the epitomal 1940's version of Captain Marvel as drawn by C.C. Beck. Blame the good Captain's popularity for that -- Fawcett Publications was rushing out Captain Marvel material in response to fervent public demand, and that required artists and writers other than the then-standard Bill Parker/C.C. Beck team.

George Tuska supplies a surprisingly light line in the stories he illustrates here, and the writers keep the fantastic adventures -- always more fantastic than those of Superman during the 1940's -- rolling along. There's some surprisingly metafictional stories here, along with attempts to mesh the mostly inconsistent worlds of the comic book and the recent Republic Captain Marvel serial, which offered an origin for Captain Marvel much different than that of the comic book.

We also get what is probably the first in-story 'franchising' of a superhero, as Captain Marvel 'drafts' the three similarly powered Lieutenant Marvels. This stuff is all so much more fun than most modern superhero comics, it isn't even funny. Michael Uslan supplies a pointlessly continuity-obsessed introduction. Yes, it's true, Michael -- there's a certain lack of consistency in the presentation of a variety of things in the Captain Marvel stories. That's because no one gave a shit about that stuff in 1941, though one day an obsession with continuity would begin to crush the life out of superhero comics. Highly recommended.

Bill Clinton vs. Captain America: The Road to Victory

Book:

The Horror in the Museum and Other Revisions by H.P. Lovecraft and others: H.P. Lovecraft made a portion of his meagre living editing other people's stories. This Del Rey edition of the revised Arkham House volume collects 'primary' revisions -- in which there's very little of the original writer's work left in the finished story -- and 'secondary' revisions, which are closer to being collaborations. While some of the stories here are pretty minor, there are also some solid stories ("The Night Ocean" is an evocative and subtle secondary revision) and works as good as many of Lovecraft's 'own' ("The Mound" and "The Horror in the Museum" are fine additions to the Cthulhu Mythos, while "The Loved Dead" is a creepy bit of Poesque necrofetishism). Technically, the oft-collected "Abandoned with the Pharoahs" could be included here for the sake of completism -- it's the novella Lovecraft ghost-wrote for Harry Houdini -- but this is such a giant collection that it's hard to fault any omissions. Highly recommended for Lovecraftians; recommended for anyone else.


Comics:


Unknown Soldier: Haunted House, Between Here and There, Easy Kill and The Way Home by Joshua Dysart, Alberto Ponticelli and Pat Masioni (2008-2009; collections ongoing): The original Unknown Soldier was a Silver Age DC World War II hero who was a master of disguise, his real face always covered by Invisible-Man-type bandages. That hero's adventures ended in the early 1980's with the cancellation of most of DC's war titles. Subsequent attempts to resurrect the character have usually erred on the side of almost self-parodic grim-and-grittiness.

In this adult-oriented Vertigo title, Dysart and Ponticelli wisely throw out pretty much everything of the original character, keeping only the bandages and the overarching idea of 'one man's war.' The primary setting is now Uganda in the early oughts, where an African-born, American-raised doctor and his wife are attempting to raise global awareness of the terrible violence of Uganda's civil war. But the doctor's having nightmares about becoming violent himself, about something or someone living inside his own brain who's pretty much an expert at killing. And pretty soon, the doctor's part of the conflict, his self-scarred face hidden behind a mask of bandages.

Reductively speaking, the new Unknown Soldier is part Jason Bourne, part Jeckyll and Hyde. However, the setting for the series -- war-torn, divided Uganda -- gives us a milieu for a war comic that's rarely been even nodded at, ravaged post-colonial Africa. The stories and sub-stories are heart-breaking, and Ponticelli's art stands firmly in the tradition of Harvey Kurtzman's great war comics for EC in the 1950's, meticulously realistic and realistically bloody. There aren't many works in any medium that manage to make violence both thrilling and nauseating, sometimes at the same time. One of the things that highlights the quality of the series for me is that after 15 issues, we still know very little of what's made the doctor into some sort of pre-programmed killing machine with a conscience, and the slow pace of the revelations seems perfectly natural to the story. We aren't dealing with a puzzle piece. A great on-going title that deserves all the accolades it's getting. Highest recommendation.


The Greatest Shazam! Stories Ever Told by Bill Parker, Otto Binder, Denny O'Neil, Martin Pasko, Jerry Ordway, C.C. Beck, Kurt Schaffenberger, Jack Kirby, Joe Simon, Curt Swan and others (1940-2008; collected 2008): DC's editorial policy on its line of 'Greatest...' collections has never seemed more political and less quality-oriented than on this volume. Fawcett published the original Captain Marvel of the 1940's and early 1950's -- he who said Shazam! to change from young teen Billy Batson to Captain Marvel and back again.

For a time in the early 1940's, Captain Marvel outsold Superman. Why? Because it was the best superhero book in a still-young sub-genre, with crisp art and lively, fantasy-heavy stories pitting Captain Marvel against a terrific rogue's gallery of such weirdos and grotesques and Thaddeus Bodog Sivana, IBAC, King Kull the Beast-man and Mr. Mind, a hyper-intelligent worm (though he was drawn to look more like a fuzzy green caterpillar with eyeglasses and a little mechanical voicebox to translate his worm-language rantings into audible English). These were comics for children that an adult can read and enjoy now, and the imminent DC collection of the +20-part WWII Captain Marvel epic, The Monster Society of Evil, makes me feel all tingly inside.

DC would eventually exhaust Fawcett in court over similarities between Marvel and Superman, with Fawcett ceasing publication pretty much contemporaneous with the near-death of super-hero comics in the 1950's. Marvel would eventually publish its own Captain Marvel in the 1960's, hence DC's use of Shazam! on covers and promotional literature, despite the fact that their hero is still called Captain Marvel within. DC relaunched the good Captain in his own book in 1974, originally with pivotal original artist CC Beck drawing the book. But Beck would soon leave, and the book would soon become most notable for the reprints it ran of vintage Captain Marvel and Captain Marvel Family stories during a period when Shazam! was a 100-page Giant. Once DC decided that Marvel should exist within the same universe as their other super-hero titles, most post-1980 attempts to revive the title either made the character far too realistic or, somewhat bizarrely, oafishly and naively dim.

And so what we get here are about 80 pages of original Captain Marvel goodness, somewhat compromised by a lengthy 1940's Joe Simon/Jack Kirby Captain Marvel story that is, frankly, not all that good. Then we get about 120 pages of various Captain Marvel stories spanning the various DC reboots of the character up to the present day. The best of those reboots, Jeff Smith's recent Shazam and the Monster Society of Evil, can't be included here because of length. A Jerry Ordway/Peter Krause story from the most recent ongoing Shazam title, Power of Shazam from the 1990's, is nice and earnest and heart-warming and pretty much entirely lacking in the zing and zip of the character at its 1940's best. The other recent stories are also exceedingly minor.

The one stand-out from the post-1950's material doesn't technically star Captain Marvel at all. "Make Way for Captain Thunder!" is a standalone story from the early 1970's Superman title by Martin Pasko and Curt Swan. DC was already publishing Shazam by this time, so I assume having Thunder stand in for Marvel was either a rights issue or an editorial decision related to when and where DC wanted an official crossover between the Marvel Family and DC's mainline universe of heroes. In any case, this story -- in which a dimension-lost Captain Thunder and Superman battle before the Man of Steel figures out how to cure Thunder of his villain-created madness and send him on his way back home again -- is a fairly light-hearted delight. It also demonstrates that Curt Swan drew the best-looking 'realistic' Captain Marvel of them all, regardless of name. Alex Ross's hyper-realistic Captain Marvel, so creepily effective in Kingdom Come and used for the cover here, has always looked sinister and not a little bonkers to me. Cartooning doesn't necessarily translate to more realistic forms of representation without a lot of reworking.

In any case, my recommendation of this volume is highly qualified -- you do get some vintage 1940's and 1950's Captain Marvel along with the Pasko/Swan story, but that's still less than half the volume. If you ever see the Harmony hardcover Shazam! from the 40's to the 70's, snap it up. Well, unless it's $200, which is what it sometimes goes for. But you'll also find equally good or better selections of vintage Shazam! reprints in back issues of those 1970's 100-page giants. So hit the back-issue bins!


Captain America: Operation Rebirth (2nd edition) by Mark Waid and Ron Garney (1995-96; coll. 2008): Marvel re-reprints the mid-1990's 'Death of Captain America' storyline with six more issues of context before and after that storyline (entitled 'Operation Rebirth'). Writer Waid and penciller Garney are one of the three or four great Captain America creative teams, and this storyline is a lot of fun. Not only do we get the Red Skull and the Cosmic Cube, staples of Captain America stories for decades, but we also get what must be the lengthiest appearance of a real-world American president in a super-hero comic prior to Marvel's various Obama projects. Seriously, Bill Clinton appears in multiple issues here. It's like some bizarre Marvel sequel to "Superman's Secret Mission for President Kennedy." Highly recommended.


Sebastian O by Grant Morrison and Steve Yeowell (1993; coll. 2004): Zany postmodern shenanigans from Morrison and Yeowell. In a high-tech, fin de seicle Victorian England, dandy assassin/aesthete Sebastian O battles to discover a sinister conspiracy while remaining witty and impeccably dressed. Weird fun. Highly recommended.