Shazam

>only a few appearances in Rebirth
>Johns and Didio keep saying Shazam is a high priority they want to get right
>getting a movie based on Nu52 origins that's a releasing in 2019

Do we seriously have to wait until his movie is out before we get a new comic series?

Yes

>getting a movie based on Nu52 origins that's a releasing in 2019
UGH

There is no reason to adapt that garbage over Power of Shazam. God forbid we get something bright and optimistic instead.

It was bright and optimistic. Billy was just a little jerk at the beginning, he changed.

Yeah but he really sucked at the beginning.

...

You have to remember that I really fucking hate Johns as a writer.

>Calling him Shazam
>Posting Thunderworld

C'mon friend-o

Sadly, yes.

It's only made all the more aggravating by the plethora of great pitches in the form of Morrison + Cam Stew's Thunderworld, and Parker + Shaner's Convergence: Shazam!

Tell me this page right here wouldn't be a wonderful pitch for a Cap movie

Hopefully WB has the balls to call him Captain Marvel even if the movie is called Shazam.

Bendis is going to write his ongoing as soon as the first teaser trailer for his movie gets released

I guarantee they won't. Shazam is easier to market.

DC really does a terrible job with Billy.

Shazam is the only name they've ever marketed him under.

In addition to that, after a disastrously ill-advised attempt to sue Marvel over their Captain Marvel in the 1970s (when DC found out that, no, copyright is not the same as trademark), DC (and WB, who were already making a tv show by then) agreed to never again attempt to use the Captain Marvel name in that way.

Inside a book: fine, not advertising him. In a show but never actually used in trailers? Sure why not.

In the title? Never. And they never will. Fuck, the way things are going with the AT&T and 20thCFOX empires, WB will probably just sell up Shazam to Disney as soon as the New Line Cinema option runs down. It's a lot simpler than ever trying to exploit that particular IP themselves.

No it didn’t, it was understandable why Billy is the way he was at the beginning

Curse of Shazam wasn't that bad

That was only really an issue when it was the monthly JL backup, meaning he seemed like that for 3-4 months and turned a lot of people of. In the trade (and likely in the movie) it works far better, and to be honest I like this version of Billy. Being a bit of a jerk initially from bad experience is reasonable for a kid in his position, and makes learning of the fact he's a nice kid, the emergence of his innate heroism and acceptance of his new family all the more meaningful.

We have plenty of characters like that, though.

>completely missing the point of Whiz Comics Captain Marvel
Fuck you Johns.

We already made Superman a cunt, there's no need to make Billy act like one.

>protagonist goes through character development

I know this is unheard of by capefags, but this is how a story is actually supposed to work.

>HURRR CAPEFAGS DON'T UNDERSTAND KARAKTER
>He says about a character whose purpose is their simplicity.

I'll bitch all day about Bruce Wayne being a terribly developed character, but Billy's simple for a reason, faggot.

Power of Shazam isn't that bright and optimistic.

He's simple in the Nu52 version too, just with an incredibly simple character arc to start off so he's more than a posterboy for how great the 40's were.

(You)

how did they get away using the captain marvel name in the morrison one shot?

He wasnt THAT much of a dickhead. Ive seen worse 14 year olds

I feel that's a bit disingenuous, as they didn't really have arcs for most characters back then, including Billy. They had stories that gave insight to who the characters were and how they acted, but they stood as figures frozen in time, a singular ideal. That ideal would warp and change for some heroes even within that era, like Batman, but they didn't have "arcs" for the most part.

There's plenty of characters who could use more nuance, more negative qualities, actual arcs, but Billy's one of the few who doesn't.

Remember when David Sandberg endorsed a "contest" that was basically just a way for WB to steal people's pitches and barely pay them?

Johns is such cancer.

>Having a character who just happens to be a good person for once means they're a posterboy for the 40's being awesome.

I wonder what it's like to be this cynical.

>but Billy's one of the few who doesn't.
That's why he's had so many long running ongoings, eh?

Billy's been a boring cardboard cutout for the last several decades because people want him to stay as a symbol for the Silver Age instead of doing literally anything with the character. Billy Batson as the messenger of nostalgic simplicity is as much an overblown misrepresentation shackling the character as Superman when he stands in for the good old days of Jesus heroes.

You've never read any book with Captain Marvel if that's what you think.

The Power of Shazam books, graphic novel and all by Jerry Ordway is a fine start.

>Still called Shazam
>nu52 origin
I'd rather not have the character back at all if it means being saddled with that shit

typical casual reply

>150 issues of Captain Marvel Adventures
>90 issues of Marvel Family
>154 Whiz Comics
>35 issues of Shazam in the 70's.
>47 issues of Power of Shazam

I dunno, seems like he did pretty good to me, my man.

Not in the last 25 years.

I love Captain Marvel's Golden Age stories.
The Power of Shazam is a dull modern comic and Billy Batson in DC has been a fucking mess since the beginning. The Curse of Shazam is one of the few takes on the idea I actually like because it doesn't focus so much on how Billy is baby Jesus dealing with a corrupt world.

Maybe, instead of nostalgia wank and lifting up how wonderful a certain era was, it's okay to just have a character who pops up now and again for a certain kind of story?

Like, do you bitch about Dr. Fate showing up as the weirdo who tells this story's hero that great peril is afoot? Do you get mad when Solomon Grundy is a big ol brute to smash up? Sure, some writers use him poorly, that's a fucking given, but maybe it's better to just not use a character than change what they are, sometimes.

>Like, do you bitch about Dr. Fate
Every chance I get. He should be used in vertigo-esque stories in which magic is treated as more than few pew lasers and magic shields and the series should focus on the cosmic balance between good and evil, the corruption of one's soul and the dual aspect of having two different entities inhabiting the same body and the struggle for control.

I think the problem just lies in you, then.

Not every character is going to be a protagonist. It'd be nice to see Kent in that role, but there's no reason to begrudge the way he's used elsewhere. His teamups aren't about Kent. They're about the person he's advising or warning or fighting to stop.

Besides, pretty much every single Fate comic does exactly what you said anyway, they just aren't about Kent Nelson.

That’s how studios work, senpai. I’m sure it was a big revelation to you when you saw that RLM video

>I think the problem just lies in you, then.
Not at all. If you don't think Dr. Fate has been dull as fuck for the past two decades then I'm not even sure what you're arguing.

When the "certain kind of story" is nostalgia wank lifting up a certain era, yeah it's bad that he's extremely pigeonholed in a way that makes his character mostly a message. And not even a good message at that. Solomon Grundy is fine as a brute because he hardly gets any focus but deserves better. Dr. Fate in those stories, s user is pointing out, is extremely repetitive and fairly dull. Wanting mainline characters to be written as more than single note cliches instead of, at the very least, whole bundles of cliches, is just demanding poor repetitive storytelling.

I know how they work, I was just bringing it up.
No need to be so condescending.

I'm not even arguing on the level of "are the writers doing a good job of it or not," this is a matter of character utility. If you're demanding that Fate delve into the duality of mind and the very nature of chaos versus order when he's just showing up for a guest spot in Amethyst, you're really, REALLY asking too much. You're asking for him to wrest the story away from the protagonists whenever he makes a guest appearance. It's inane, it's stupid, it's terrible writing. Sure, having him do more than simply go "bluh, here is your exposition, peace" is warranted (and there are cases where he does just that as well as cases where he goes well beyond that role), but the expectations placed here are absurd.

Especially when we have like three or four fucking Dr. Fate books like that already. I'm sure you guys read this, right? It's literally about every single thing user suggested. You definitely bought this every month as it came out since you wanted Fate to have some nuance that bad, right?

Like fuck's sake, I'll rally against the dull, repetitive, character-free status quo bullshit of DC and Marvel any day, but you guys are acting like it's just not okay to have any static characters in your universe at all. That's fucking terrible for storytelling.

Are you fucking stupid? That's a very shallow take on the old as fuck "kid finds power and discovers that it comes with great responsibility plot. It's also about egyptian gods battling each other. Oh and no duality shit. I think you might just be baiting.

>I-it doesn't count because it wasn't amazing and not the Dr. Fate I wanted specifically!
Okay, assclown, sure. Just keep moving those goalposts. You still have Linda and Eric's run if you care about all that anyway.

>And no duality shit
It went WAY out of its way to push that point in multiple ways. Like shit man, come on.

>the past two decades
You're saying that like he was ever any different.

Dude's always been a cool design and nothing else worth mentioning.

the book wasn't called Captain Marvel, is how

that was a good little run and I wish Khalid would be around some.

poor kid didn't even get into Mystik U

>Just keep moving those goalposts
You fucking moron, I said they should use him in a certain way and you came and said the recent crapfest of a comic was exactly like that except it wasn't anything like that. How the fuck are you unironically trying to imply the recent Levitz comic was Vertigo-esque and not a riff on Spider-man/Blue Beetle/Kamala etc? The Linda and Eric run was like that, yes, but that happened 30 fucking years ago and since then Dr. Fate has been a mess and they even tried to reinvent him in the 90s and failed spectacularly. Since 1999 he's just appeared here and there to shoot magic bolts of energy and make magic shields and vaguely warn about a coming threat. It's all dull and awful and that's why nobody gives a fuck about Dr. Fate, he's dull as fuck.

Not true, Fawcett Comics Captain Marvel is rad. They're truly bonkers adventure comics, worth the time to read even half a century later. His stuff since the DC buyout mostly is pretty dull.

It's the same thing wrapped up in a Jaime Reyes pattered bow. Yeah, there's new, different elements to it. Yeah, it's not a great book.

But it still goes and makes the magic more than pew pew lasers and shields. It does focus on cosmic good and evil, though not in the same way or terms as the Linda and Eric run did. It's still about the influence of fate and the duality of Khalid and Nabu.

But it's not the way YOU wanted it, so somehow it doesn't count. You're hiding behind the shield of "he's so dull" but what you really mean is "I want the version *I* liked, not THAT one!" You want Eric and Linda back. They could be playing reruns of their run for decades and you'd be content, so fuck off with this "oh, he's so repetitive!" shit.

They're talking about Dr. Fate, not the big red cheese, m8.

>"I want the version *I* liked, not THAT one!"
Wasn't this your exact argument ten minutes ago for Captain Marvel? And that one was that he had to be a cardboard cutout, not even properly representing the stories of his early run.

>I want the version *I* liked, not THAT one
Considering I'm the only one that cares about the character maybe they should listen to the fans, in this case just me.

>But it still goes and makes the magic more than pew pew lasers and shields
Yeah, you're right. It's him flying around the city, lifting rubble and helping people and then thinking "am I high? I gotta be high 'cause this isn't real". Oh and occasionally Nabu shows up as a spirit to say something snarky and then disappears, oh that Nabu...

What I want is a Helmet of Fate series where it gets passed down to multiple hosts along the run. Fyi.
They could certainly actually use the angle of Nabu trying to wrestle control over from the host, the more he wears the helmet the more Nabu is in control and due to repeated uses he ends up taking over the host's mind even when he's not wearing the helmet.
But no, this riff on Spider-man/Blue Beetle-esque shit is what was needed. The damn series is the exact opposite of what I said in my initial post they should do with him and now you're talking about how "well huu, it wasn't what YOU wanted", no shit genius.

BUSTED

a Madame Xanaduesque Fate book following the helmet through the centuries is something I didn't know I needed so bad until right now

>>Wasn't this your exact argument ten minutes ago for Captain Marvel?
No, it was "some characters don't need to be terribly nuanced." As in, static characters are fine. Every story needs a few, otherwise your focus gets lost. He doesn't have to be exactly the same Captain Marvel I enjoy, but I think that simplicity is a virtue in this character's case.

>And that one was that he had to be a cardboard cutout
No? Never said anything like that.
You know a great take on Billy? Justice League Unlimited. It still manages to tell an interesting story where, get this, Billy is in the wrong about something. He has harsh words to say and isn't entirely justified in his actions. He has negative thoughts and feelings and beats up Superman. But the simplicity of the character isn't compromised in doing this. They don't need to change the core of the character to accomplish this because they aren't hacks.

Captain Marvel in JLU is an idiot and an asshole.

>pushing this meme character

Justice League Unlimited's Billy Batson is a prop for Superman's development. He's in no way a main character of that story, he barely has any lines at all.

>Considering I'm the only one that cares about the character
Mhm. Glad to see I'm talking to an egotist.
Guess my purchasing power means nothing next to your anger over there being a Fate book you personally disliked.

>>What I want is a Helmet of Fate series where it gets passed down to multiple hosts along the run. Fyi.
Personally I'd prefer a new volume of Sword and Sorcery that has Amethyst and Fate as deutragonists, with Fate being an amalgam of all his previous hosts. But we all want that great book that nobody else is going to write. Them's the breaks.

But you're still dodging the point. It hit the notes you asked for, just not in the particular manner you wanted it approached. You're feigning that it's a matter of the character being dull rather than not catering to your personal tastes. Cut the bullshit, man.

>He's in no way a main character of that story
It's almost like

Billy's strength is being a static character that other's bounce off of.

>a Fate book you personally disliked.
Are you trying to imply it didn't fail? Or the previous Hector Hall series didn't fail?

>It hit the notes you asked for
It hit none of the points I asked for, numbnuts.

That explains why he doesn't have and doesn't deserve an ongoing then.

>being this much of an absolute pleb
>misuses "meme"
>in the year of our lord two thousand and eighteen

But that's not true at all, he's been a main character multiple times and all his best stories were back in the day when he was a main character. He didn't survive to become a DC character by being a static cardboard cutout for others to be more interesting around.

>Are you trying to imply it didn't fail? Or the previous Hector Hall series didn't fail?
No? You said you're the only one who cares about the character, as if your anger over the series somehow means your opinion matters more than any other Dr. Fate fan.

>It hit none of the points I asked for
>magic is treated as more than few pew lasers and magic shields
>the series should focus on the cosmic balance between good and evil
>the dual aspect of having two different entities inhabiting the same body
It did all of these things. Not the way you would have liked, but it did them.

Oh my fucki-
I really wish you bastards were forced to take some basic lit classes before posting about writing, I really do. Being a static character doesn't mean you're a "cardboard cutout" or not a protagonist. It means that you don't experience significant change as a character from the events of the story. Your disposition, behavior and morality are static. You do not change. It has nothing to do with how interesting you are or anything of the sort.

>Gets multiple series that last over six years when he's static.
>Gets zero series once he's changed to be more dynamic.

I'd honestly expect it to be the other way around, but you're hurting your own point when you say this shit.

Captain Marvel has been hurting for an ongoing or any relevance whatsoever for literally decades before Curse of Shazam, which mostly got messed up by its writer gaining too many editorial responsibilities. Also no, if you want the Billy Batson DC's been putting out for decades, you are absolutely advocating for a shitty cardboard cutout nostalgia wank.

>>magic is treated as more than few pew lasers and magic shields
It's not. There's some telekinesis there, I guess, but it's still a shallow use of magic
>>the series should focus on the cosmic balance between good and evil
The series focuses on Khalid balancing his life as a med student and his life as a superhero
>>the dual aspect of having two different entities inhabiting the same body
Nabu only appears to say something snarky from time to time. It's not that the duality isn't present, but throughout the entire run, Khalid still feels the need to say "did someone slip something in my drink? surely magic can't be real and I'm just seeing things"
And most importantly, it's a classic superhero comic, not a vertigo-esque series. If you were baiting then congratulations, you did a terrible job but I was dumb enough to respond to poor bait.

Why are people so autistic about the name change?

>doesn't get an ongoing for decades while static
>gets changed to be more dynamic in a couple of backups and is immediately optioned for a movie
woop woop

Halle Berry's Catwoman.
Just sayin'.

Because Shazam is the name of the wizard not Captain Marvel. It doesn't make sense. Plus whenever Billy says Shazam he transforms. So technically he can't even introduce himself to anyone without revealing his identity and losing his power.

Catwoman was doing pretty good at that time though.

Oh a name change is bad but swearing is fine...

And in the past he would transform when talking about the Wizard.

It was more like, 13 years? 15? A lot of DC characters have much longer dry spells.

>which mostly got messed up by its writer gaining too many editorial responsibilities
Honestly I think Johns is just an iffy writer in general.

>if you want the Billy Batson DC's been putting out for decades
Holy words I never said, Batman. I'm saying Billy works better as a static character and there's nothing wrong with having a static character as your protagonist. That's not an endorsement of the way he's written, but rather the basis of the character remaining as it was. He doesn't need a shakeup. The foundation's still solid to actually write good stories about.

People get silly about it, but it's a really bad name change. They should have just called him Captain Marvelous.

The kind of people who make these things aren't mature, user. Also you can actually talk around that a lot easier than being unable to say your hero identity's name.

19. Power of Shazam ended in 1999

>before Curse of Shazam
>2012
13

I don't think you actually read Curse of Shazam.

>That's not an endorsement of the way he's written, but rather the basis of the character remaining as it was
That's... the same thing.

Unpopular opinion here, but I actually liked the hood

Not really.

One's the basis of the character, the other's execution and interpretation. You can like Grant Morrison's Super Jesus and hate Zack Snyder's take on it. You can like Batman as a campy character in the TV show and hate Bill Finger Batman.

I liked Fawcett Captain Marvel, but I've never been hot on how he's been written at DC. That's not because the core of the character or the way he's utilized as a storytelling prop/character is rotten, but because the writers create boring stories most of the time.

Cruse of Shazam isn't an ongoing. Not even a mini. It was a backup story.

I like it on Black Adam, don't care much for it on Shazam

>an ongoing or any relevance whatsoever
Keep backpedaling, user.

I'm more of a no cape at all for Black Adam

Man, this art style looks nice, but on the other hand, this is really very corny. How is this worthy of such hype or interest? I really don't understand; then again I don't understand Superman either, or Batman, pretty much none of DC characters aside from maybe Green Lantern. They all look extremely archetypical, which I guess it's the point, but it's definitely not for me.

Am I the only one who unironically wants Steamboat to appear in a movie or new comic?

>Tell me this page right here wouldn't be a wonderful pitch for a Cap movie
It's... not. It doesn't actually say anything to anybody who doesn't already love Captain Marvel. Hell, having Billy Batson argue on Captain Marvel's behalf kind of make him sounds like a prick.

They hated him even back then, user, so yes.

>Shazam movie coming out
>The main antagonist is the virgin Black Adam and not the Chad Mister Mind.

Both of them are overused, and only exacerbated by the rarity of Captain Marvel stories. Sivana's better than both, although he's even bordering.

I thought they confirmed they're saving BA for later?

Pretty sure Sivana was confirmed as the villain for the movie.

>You've never read any book with Captain Marvel if that's what you think.
Yeah you're right, Kids today love to act like they're from Mayberry. It's not at all a weird for Billy to act like he's from Pleasantville.

BA is getting his own solo film starring The Rock IIRC