Exploring more of this unusual family.
Creative Staff:
Story: Louise Simonson, Phil Hester
Art: Bret Blevins, Eric Gapstur
Colors: Chris Sotomayor, David Baron
Letterer: Marshall Dillon
What They Say:
Story 1 – Pedro takes his new crossing guard responsibilities very seriously. But when disaster strikes, can he keep his Shazam Family identity a secret and keep his classmates safe?
Story 2 – A mysterious glowing artifact proves to be the perfect power source for Eugene’s robotics project—until it grants his robot a life of its own! Now Eugene must dismantle the rogue battlebots before they destroy Fawcett High…and to do it, he’ll need the helpof his greatest rival!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
A new round of Shazam stories brings us a different pair of creative teams to tell tales, which continue to be one of the best parts of these books. Creators new and old getting a shot at doing something fun without worrying about continuity. That the first story comes from Louise Simonson alone is a fantastic thing and she works well with Bret Blevins here to work a story about the kids. The second tale is a bit rougher as Phil Hester tries to cram in too much into too few pages but Eric Gapstur is up to the challenge and manages to keep it from being overdone.
The first story is a fun one that with its emphasis on safety and the potential that kids are reading this one since it has kids as characters makes sense. We get Pedro really taking seriously his job as a crossing guard with all the safety rules that comes with it, while some like Eugene are just mocking him a bit because he does take it so far. Everything changes in an instant, however, when a truck comes barreling at them as the driver has passed out. It’s a quick and easy save but requires Pedro using his powers and transforming and forces Eugene to do the same in order to hide what was happening and potentially Pedro’s involvement. There’s no malice in the story but what we get is to see how this family unit interacts with each other over their powers and trying to do right by each other and still keeping the secret. There’s a nice bit of respect that Pedro gets out of this from Eugene that doesn’t feel badly forced and that’s very welcome.
The second story is a little more convoluted and busy but it has its fun moments. Here, we get a robot competition going on at the school that Lily is doing her best to win while trying to figure out how to eliminate Eugene. The competition itself is okay as it shifts into alien tech that got attached to one of the machines going wild, forcing Shazam to get involved in getting rid of it. But that and most of the competition just didn’t land for me all that much. What did work is the initial fight where we see Shazam battling an out of control bulldozer while Lily is documenting how she intends to eliminate Eugene in the competition. That makes it busier than it should but just watching Shazam battle the machine while everyone calls him by other names such as Superman is just hilarious. His responses are spot on and getting smacked around by the crane arm through it really does work nicely.
In Summary:
As I’ve said, Shazam is a character I haven’t quite gotten in comics form in a way that works for me in the modern age. These two stories do some nice stuff on focusing on different aspects of him and his abilities and the personalities of the kids. I’ll admit part of me was just thrilled in having more story material from Louise Simonson as I didn’t think I’d see new material from her at all again until recently. The end result here are two cute stories that work well with what they’re trying to do but Simonson’s story feels more cohesive and structured while Hester’s is trying to cram too much into it and the pacing just makes it a harder read than it should be. Both stories have great artwork and are a lot of fun with all the details and color design there to make them enjoyable.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 12+
Released By: DC Comics | Amazon | ComiXology
Release Date: July 24th, 2020
MSRP: $0.99
