Friday, December 15, 2017

Mary is cast!

Rumored for several weeks, it is now official Grace Fulton has been cast as Mary in the Shazam! movie.  Since signs point to the movie being an adaption of the unpopular and divisive Curse of Shazam new52 reboot, Mary is one of the foster kids in the home Billy goes to.  She is older than Billy, and to date in the continuity, nothing is established that Billy and Mary are blood related.  In the classic version, Billy and Mary are twins who were separated at birth, and reunited after Billy gains the power to transform into Captain Marvel.

2 comments:

Daniel said...

Not sure where else to write this, but you should do a review of the new Deluxe Edition of "Shazam! The New Beginning" from 1987 by Roy Thomas and Tom Mandrake. Based on what I've read on this site, I don't think you'll like it, but I think it's really interesting. It's probably my favorite of the four reboots that DC has done with the character (Thomas/Mandrake; Jerry Ordway; Jeff Smith; and Johns/Frank).

It suffers a bit from Thomas' terrible, dated 1980s-style dialogue, but the basic structure is really good. It's much darker than I think most people like their version of Shazam to be, but I think it's actually quite accurately plays up the darker Dickensian roots at the heart of the character and concept that was more evident in the first few years it was published. I also really like how Thomas streamlined the narrative by making both Dudley and Sivana as Billy's uncles. And his idea for Mister Mind (only suggested on the final page) was pretty cool. This was also the first story to integrate Black Adam into Captain Marvel's origin story.

And Tom Mandrake's art, which I really didn't like as a 14-year-old in 1987 has aged quite well. Very expressionistic. I like it quite a bit as an adult.

The second story about the origins of Captain Nazi (illustrated by Rick Staci) from Action Comics Weekly is pretty terrible and easily skipped (although, with the focus on neo-Nazis in America, it's actually much more timely today than it was in 1987).

— Daniel

Shazamaholic said...

Daniel, I did do a kind of mini-review of the series in a previous column, Ranking the Shazam Reboots