Shazam 1, Waid and Mora
It’s a great book for kids. I could give this to my 8 year old with no fears. I could also give it to him because Waid lays down a great deal of exposition to fill the reader in on Shazam and catch them up; there’s a lot to cover and he pulls it off; the powers, who he is, a bit about the foster family and other marvel kids (now depowered – thankfully. The last thing Dc needs now is another fucking family book with a huge entourage) the magic word, the rock, the wizard, Tawny and so on…..For a 45 year old who already knows that shit, it’s not the most engrossing read, but if I was a kid it would probably be great. Waid attempts to appeal to the modern audience by having Shazam broadcasting constantly to social media, and smartly plays the downside of that into the cliffhanger.
The issue should have been double sized. There’s a decent cliffhanger but other than that it really lacks a hook. Make it double sized and keep it the same price, remember DC when you used to give incentives for new readers rather than just expect them to turn up?
The art is terrific. Mora is a beast and is clearly inking straight to roughs and it gives the art a nice bit of energy. You can tell he’s working fast (he needs to with the amount of work he’s churning out) but it’s not to the detriment of the book. There’s some lovely pages. The colours are pretty good as well, Shazam pops off the page with the red and yellow, the
way he should.
It’s solidly written, which is more than I can say for most – that’s what you get with Waid though. I have faith it will be a very good series, but for a first issue I’m wanting more. Specifically more plot. Good but not great, but yea this along the lines of the comics DC need to make more of.
7/10
Adventures of Superman Jon Kent 3, (Tom Taylor, Clayton Henry)
And this is along the lines of what DC need to be making less of. Writing, art and even the lettering here is horrible. In fact, even Jordie Bellaire, who I consider the best colourist in comics, has turned in some horrible work here, but then Henry doesn’t give her much to work with.
Here’s the problem: DC know Jon Kent is a shit character. Having 2 supermen doesn’t work, it’s hard enough to produce a good comic for 1 superman, not to mention fitting Supergirl in there.
Jon worked for a bit at first, giving Lois and Clark a kid, then the whole Supersons stuff that Thomasi wrote was fun. But it always had limited legs.
Bendis aging him up then presented DC with a huge problem for future generations of writers to deal with, and Tom Taylor making him gay made that even worse. Before you start sharpening the pitch forks here me out:
DC are stuck with this character now that doesn’t work. It has created a massive problem for the superman line. Making him gay means they can’t retcon and get rid of him, because it will be met with outrage from people on the internet who mostly dont buy or read comics (if they did the book wouldn’t be outside the top 100 selling books). So they have to keep him around and it’s a mess.
So what do they do………
Jon finds himself on another universe; clearly a plot device to get him out the main superman book can focus on telling a superman story. ANOTHER multiverse story, one without a shred of originality because Tom Taylor doesn’t have a creative bone in his body. Total snooze fest by a hack writer and hack artist who are going through the motions for a paycheck.
Other than take his plots from Twitter feeds, Taylor’s other main shortfall is his tell don’t show approach to storytelling. So what we have here is the superman of this universe explain to Jon what the hook of this universe is all about, he should have just dumped this all on Twitter rather than have two floating supermen talking about it. It’s seriously bad comics.
Why am I still reading this, even though I can’t remember a single thing about the whole previous series? Because I pay for the app and I’m trying to get my head straight in the current continuity.
I genuinely don’t know who this book is for and I’ll be very surprised if DC do another mini series after this one, unless they are just going to publish them at a loss as a placeholder, doing 6 issues every year or two to avoid negative press. I can’t read any more of this shit though, even for free.
I’d put an options paper to DC for this character and provide them with the following recommendations
1. Kill the character off
2. Reboot superman without him
3. Hire creators who actually have passion for this character to produce something worth publishing, rather than a guy who revels in having fights with toxic people on social media and gears his strips towards that, who clearly doesn’t really give a fuck about the character when he produces this half arsed crap
2/10
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