By: Eric Wallace (writer), Cliff Richards (artist), Hi-Fi (colorist)
The Story: Mary Batson, did no one ever tell you making deals with demons is never a good idea?
The Review: Captain Marvel and the rest of his ilk have always seemed a little out of place in the DCU. Besides the gimmick of their magic word, there’s not much setting them apart from their superhero peers. It’s even difficult seeing the Big Red Cheese himself as anything other than Superman—with magic (an idea Grant Morrison played with in Final Crisis). Most writers have difficulty selling the Marvels’ natural goody-goodiness in a world that requires some attitude to succeed.
This is the problem Eric Wallace runs into in his one-shot of the Marvel family. On the one hand, he deserves a bit of a break; the characters were left in shambles the last time they were written. Billy and Mary lost their powers, which their underdeveloped civilian personas couldn’t possibly make up for. Freddy Freeman’s promotion to the red outfit lost the Jr. from his name and added some long hair, but has otherwise done nothing to invigorate the character. Wallace is working an uphill battle here.
But from another perspective, Wallace had a great opportunity to breathe some new life into the characters, and he mostly squanders it. The tension between the Batsons and Freddy introduced at the start of the issue turns out to be a blind, which means they never lost trust in each other at all, which also means they avoid any character-building personal conflicts. This is a big miss, since after all these years, their camaraderie seems based on tradition more than any signs of genuine friendship.
Wallace’s choice to have the Batsons bemoan the loss of their powers and how it’s holding them back comes across shallow and even a little insulting. After all, when you consider the number of heroes in the DCU alone who play it no-powers style, wistfully regretting your former gods-given abilities seems a trifle narrow-minded, don’t you think? It feels as if since the Marvels really have no identity beyond their powers, the only stories you can give them have to involve the loss of/earning of/quest for their powers. Frankly, that’s all getting pretty old.
Worst of all, the issue makes no efforts to have the Marvels show some distinctive personalities. In their featured roles on past titles (Billy in JSA, Mary with the Super Buddies miniseries, and Freddy in The Outsiders), their interactions with other DC heroes offered a glimpse of who they are under the big lightning bolts on their chests, but since then all that character work has been lost. Besides some corny gags amidst the factory-cut dialogue, none of the Marvels become more than one-dimensional.
With such a floundering script, Cliff Richards’ art is the highlight of the issue. There’s depth and personality to his lines, even if the characters have none, and he really sells the action panels, which are bold and have a lot of energy. He adds a tad too much melodrama to the out-of-costume scenes, but he’s only servicing the melodrama in the writing. If a Shazam series somehow spins out of this, I’d trust Richards to draw it.
Conclusion: A weak attempt to catch up with the Marvels in a rapidly growing and changing DCU, this one-shot does nothing to change the status quo. The characters are left much in the same state as they had before, which is sadly uninteresting and redundant.
Grade: C
– Minhquan Nguyen
Some Musings: – How the heck do Billy and Mary Batson, newsboy and homeless shelter volunteer, afford an apartment? People remember they’re still kids, right?
– And what happened to good ol’ Tawky Tawny? I’ve been missing him ever since he slayed Kalibak and became leader of the Tigermen.
Grade
Conclusion