Shazam Surprise Surprise

So back in 2009 I started my Blog page.  Among the early posts were posts I had on My Space.  Since then I have a separate account for blogs and social media.   Back then DC Comics was still recovering from the Final Crisis event.  Since then, almost four years later, things have changed greatly.  In the summer of 2011 they had the Flashpoint event.  This resulted in an altered reality.  At the end it seemed they would return to normal continuity.  Nope, in comes the new 52.  They relaunched everything.  Most things changed.  The big successful franchises, Green Lantern and Batman stayed some what the same.  So DC started revamping various Characters and trying some different takes on non-superheroes stuff in their superhero world.  When the pre-launch information came out of the New 52, the glaring omission was my favorite hero Shazam/ Captain Marvel/ Billy Batson. Before the New 52 they had depowered all the Marvel family. Freddy who became Shazam was depowered after a run in with Osiris from the Black Adam Family. 

For those who are not familiar, Captain Marvel/ Shazam is young Billy Batson a 12 year old orphan.  He encounters a Wizard who gives him the Wisdom of Solomon, the Strength of Hercules, the Stamina of Atlas, the Power of Zeus, The courage of Achilles, and the Speed of Mercury.  Billy says the name of the wizard, Shazam, and a lightning bolt hits and he becomes the adult champion Captain Marvel with all those powers.  He later found his sister who became Mary Marvel and a young crippled boy, Freddy Freeman, who idolized him, became Captain Marvel, Jr.  As a group they were referred to as the Marvel Family.  Their two biggest Arch-Enemies were Black Adam, Shazam’s former champion who was a tyrant, and Dr. Sivana, a small, frail evil scientific genius.

They finally revamped the character in the 7^th month of the New 52.  In the World of the New 52, they began a new.  They started with Billy Batson again.  This Billy was different.  He was a manipulative, smart mouthed punk.  This version is what the writers believe is what he would be if he were a product of the modern foster care system.  The hopeful optimistic characters exist, but they are the other members of the Marvel Family.  That family has been expanded with 3 new characters (Eugene Choi, Pedro Peña, and Darla Dudley) that were created during the Flashpoint event. Darla is a nod to the failed Roy Thomas Earth One version of Captain Marvel that was proposed in 1982.  This Character was to be called Captain Thunder the original intended name for the character.  In this version both Billy and the Captain were African-American. The New 52 story starts with Billy being place with a new foster home that includes the other kids.  As to date Billy is the only one empowered by the power of Shazam.  The character is also called Shazam since Marvel also has a Captain Marvel. 

All the elements are there, I just have a problem with this version of Billy Batson.  They could have made any of the other foster kids the cynical veteran of the foster system.  Maybe the writers plan to redeem him and have him rediscover his innocence and wonder.  They changed many things Dr. Sivana is no longer the little, frail intellectual, but this buff scientist.  I am still not sure what they mean to accomplish.  DC is leading up to their new event the Trinity War.  Shazam and Black Adam are major players in this.  So it will take some time to see what the folks at DC are up to.  So far what they are creating does not seem to capture the wonder and innocence of the original character of the 1940’s.   The closest DC ever got to this was the Jerry Ordway series Power of Shazam from 1994-1999. 

My history with the character goes to 1974 with the CBS Saturday morning Live Action series.  During this time DC was publishing Shazam!, a book that reprinted old stories and included new as well.  These stories were set in Earth S.  During this period DC had many Alternate realities.  When they acquired new character from other published they were given their own universes.  The Multiple Earths lead to the Crisis in Infinite Earths event in 1985 which tightened continuity.  From 1981 to 1982 there were some Captain Marvel cartoons on The Kid Super Power Hour with Shazam! show that aired on NBC.  DC reintroduced Captain Marvel in the Legends miniseries, their relaunch of Justice League and the Shazam!: The New Beginning Miniseries in 1986 and 1987.  I read the Power of Shazam series until I left comics in 1995.

Historically DC‘s track record with the character is spotty.  One reason is in the early forties Captain Marvel was more popular than Superman.  DC, then National Periodicals, sued Fawcett saying they plagiarized Superman due to similar powers and costume.  The concepts however were very different.  DC still won the lawsuit.  I wonder if the editorial mistreatment of the character is due to the fact DC cannot abide any character close to Superman’s power level existing to take his thunder.  I am biased though; I love Shazam/ Captain Marvel/ Billy Batson.  As to Superman, I am not a big fan of the Big Blue Boy Scout.  That Is My Not So Humble Opinion.

Books vs. TV

Lately a lot of TV Shows have been coming out based on successful Book Series.  I have a few in which I read and watch both iterations.  Some have not lasted long on TV like Dresden Files.  Others have become big, like Game of Thrones and True Blood. There are a few in which I only watched the TV show, I was not really interested in the books based on subject matter.  Those shows, Vampire Diaries and Blood Ties, I even stopped watching.  I even read a series of books that became a series then a few TV Movies later, Robert B. Parker’s Spenser.  I will go over those shows and/ or Books I still watch and/ or read.  I will try not to go into plotline or stories.

Dresden Files

The TV Series only lasted one short season on SciFi Channel.  It is about a Wizard/ Private Investigator who tries to help regular humans versus all the supernatural nastiness.  Paul Blackthorn was great on the show.  I later devoured the book series which is still going strong.  The audio books have James Marters, Buffy and Angel’s Spike, as the narrator.  On TV they had Dresden use every day items, a drumstick instead of a wand or blasting rod or a hockey stick instead of a staff.  His VW Bug, Hat and Duster were not there on the show.  They changed his Cop friend from a small blonde hard case to a Latina.  Who knows where they would have gone if they had more season and how it would have impacted the way Jim Butcher wrote the novels.  The Novels are very influenced by Noir, but they try to do something different when it comes to the fantasy elements.  I enjoyed both and even now there is a series of comic books based on the novels and original stories. 

True Blood/ The Southern Vampire Mysteries

Like most of these I found the show first.  I read the books later.  With this to be honest I enjoy the novels better.  They are both filled with bat crap craziness.  In the books Sookie and Jason are a bit smarter.  Eric is a bigger Jerk and Pam is a hoot.  Tara is a lot different too.  The faerie thing is in the books.  The TV writers did not make that stuff up themselves.  The books do more with various Supernatural creatures than the series has yet.  That may be due to the fact there are twelve books instead of five seasons. The two versions are seriously diverging since the second season versus the second novel.  The show has become a bit too silly and campy for me.  I still watch it, it is better than others on TV.  The Show has ratcheted up the Melodrama and camp to the Nth degree.  Sometimes it is nice not to take things too seriously. 

Game of Thrones/ A Song of Ice and Fire

This I heard of years before the series was in production.  I was a fan of George R. R. Martin’s Shared world series Wild Cards.  It was a series about people with Super powers and had a group of authors all working in the same world.  So when I heard it was becoming a TV series I listened to the Audio book before the TV show’s First Season Premiere.  The show has made changes, Tyrion is not quite as deformed and names have been changed to avoid confusion.  Other changes were made for show logistics and budgetary concerns.  In general it has been very true to the books.  First season the biggest difference were the ages of the kids and Tyrion’s appearance.  Second Season changes were done to streamline the story.  The Books can be more epic and have so many more characters.  That however does not work as well with television.  As the Show continues there with be more variations from the Novels.  They are talking that the Third book may be broken up into two Season.  They also may need to mix the books up since two of the books only cover half the characters roughly in the same time period.

Spenser/ Spenser for Hire and the A&E Spenser Movies

The Spenser series first hit the bookshelves in 1973.  In 1985 to 1988 ABC had the Spenser for Hire TV Series Starring Robert Urich and Avery Brooks as Spenser and Hawk.  The same cast returned for four TV Movies on Lifetime from 1993-1995.  From 1999 to 2001 Joe Mantegna starred in three TV movies based on Spenser Novels for A&E.  The novels are your typical hard nosed gumshoe mysteries, although Spenser is not your typical P.I.  He is a Gourmet cook and well read.  Robert B. Parker referred to the Spenser for Hire series as Spenser lite.  It was Spenser without the hardness of the novels.  Parker was one of the Producers of the A&E TV Movies.  The A&E films were closer to the novels than the Urich series and Films.  I personally prefer the books entirely.  I feel the A&E films came closest, but still did not hit the scope.  One thing that is interesting is that Joe Mantegna is the narrator for many of the Spenser Audio books. 

That Is My Not So Humble Opinion.