Review: Shazam #2

Issue number 2 take a step back from all the positive changes made in issue 1. It's not just the reversal of Freddy's hair color change.  It's almost like writer Mark Waid put the extra effort of "Fawcettizing" the first issue to hook us in, only to do a bait and switch and go back to the New52 for the 2nd issue. We get the Flashpoint kids and more of the alien dinosaurs at the beginning of the book, but once we get past that, the story gets slightly better. Instead of using one of Captain Marvel's rogues gallery, he uses the generic DC villain Psycho Pirate as the villain, but it serves a purpose to the story he is telling of the Captain becoming increasingly hostile.  Overall, the issue is not bad, but it's also not as good as the first issue. This issue earns a C. Perhaps corporate DC forced Waid to go more new52 with the 2nd issue. Let's give it a few more issues to see if things get better or worse.

 

PS- So, I watched Shazam Fury of the Gods on HBO.  Wow.  If you always wondered what a superhero movie that is worse than Joel Schumacher's Batman & Robin, worse than Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, worse than Wonder Woman 1984, worse than Thor Love & Thunder would be like, wonder no more, because this movie is it. Director David Sandberg would be very lucky if this movie doesn't Trank up the rest of his career. Maybe he should have just made it a musical. Asher Angel, who plays Billy Batson, and I thought was one of the few good things about the first movie, has little more than a glorified cameo in this one. With so little Asher, that means there is way too much Zachary Levi.  I thought he was horribly miscast as Captain Marvel in the first movie, and he does nothing to change my mind in the sequel. Perhaps the only bright spot in this movie is Jack Dylan Grazer, who plays Freddy Freeman (who I thought was one of the other only good things about the first flick).  In many ways this is really Freddy's movie, and Grazer, along with Rachel Zegler, the only other good thing in the sequel, steal the show, what little there is to steal in this stinker.  Hopefully we can get a real and proper Captain Marvel film reboot, but this movie is so bad, and did so poorly at the box office, it may be decades before the World's Mightiest Mortal gets another shot at cinematic stardom, if ever.