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I was really really impressed. Not a single negative thing to say about this book. Man, I don’t understand why DC would release this concurrently with Winick’s series, it just makes Winick’s series look that much more ridiculous.

Also, I think the main difference between this issue and the 1st issue of All Star Superman was that the latter was just okay but was notable for the potential it showed for the rest of the series. Smith’s 1st issue of Cap Marvel however was notable for the amount of potential it REALIZED right out the bat. Great job.

Actually…and I knew that I was going to be in an infinitesimally tiny minority on this…it left me a bit cold. Just a bit, mind you, don’t get me wrong; Jeff Smith is still great, and still doing a great job. But did we really have to see Captain Marvel’s origin again? I felt like the first ten pages or so were kind of wasted retelling the whole “Secret Origins” rigamarole, and as a result, we didn’t get to the good bits until the issue was almost over.

And, unlike you, I was against having CM and Billy be two separate people; I think that at heart, Captain Marvel is a really cool kid’s power fantasy of suddenly being big, strong, tough, smart, and, well, grown-up with a single word. Having him just be along for the ride with another person, instead of CM being a super version of him, kinda diminishes Billy’s part to play. If CM isn’t Billy with the wisdom of Solomon, then it could really be anyone saying “Shazam!”

That all said, I think that most of my qualms with the first issue will go away when issue two rolls around and we settle into the actual plot, and again, I think Jeff Smith did an excellent job with lots of things…just that I can’t say I agreed with his every decision.

I had to ruish home and didn’t get a chance to buy this. it better not be sold out.

“Actually…and I knew that I was going to be in an infinitesimally tiny minority on this…it left me a bit cold. Just a bit, mind you, don’t get me wrong; Jeff Smith is still great, and still doing a great job. But did we really have to see Captain Marvel’s origin again? I felt like the first ten pages or so were kind of wasted retelling the whole “Secret Origins” rigamarole, and as a result, we didn’t get to the good bits until the issue was almost over.

And, unlike you, I was against having CM and Billy be two separate people; I think that at heart, Captain Marvel is a really cool kid’s power fantasy of suddenly being big, strong, tough, smart, and, well, grown-up with a single word. Having him just be along for the ride with another person, instead of CM being a super version of him, kinda diminishes Billy’s part to play. If CM isn’t Billy with the wisdom of Solomon, then it could really be anyone saying “Shazam!””

I’d actually like to pick at both of these, if you don’t mind.

I think the “Secret Origins” stuff is quite necessary. Smith has a large amount of fans outside the direct market due to the bookstore and library success of Bone. Retelling the origin of what is for the most part, a property dead in the minds of the mainstream collective conscious, is a very good move.

As for the becoming Captain Marvel thing, I’d say the desire for a powerful, attentive and compassionate authority figure/friend fulfills another kid’s power fantasy. Smith makes careful attention to note that Billy is not interested in receiving help from an orphanage or foster family so that becoming entwined with a father/big brother figure is not only appropriate for the story, but also a different aspect of the jawesome power fantasy. I mean, if I could have the coolest guy in the world protect me from harm, hang out with me and take me to the big band by saying a single word, you’d be damn sure I’ll take him up on it.

John Seavey’s right: Billy’s character works because he’s transformed into a hero through the magic lightning NOT because he’s a placeholder that gets shunted off to limbo. That’s like saying Shazam played a dirty trick on him.

Okay, Brian, I’ll buy it. You’ve got me. My comic spending is exploding… Ahh.

I prefer the Billy as CM approach as well, especially in the confines of the DC Universe, and I’ve read quite a bit of both versions. I think that there’s more than enough room for both takes, however.

I agree that this was an excellent issue. My wife agrees that hot dogs from a cart are one of man’s greatest inventions. This also shows the good Captain’s “innocence.” We know who Mr. Mind is, but when the original Monster Society of Evil was published decades ago, it was months before Mr. Mind’s true nature (and appearance) was revealed.

The character of Captain Marvel worked as a separate entity from Billy Batson for over a decade, most of which were spent as the most popular character in comics at the time. I that’s because it taps into the kid power fantasy even more fully than John admits: a kid doesn’t want to be themselves being Superman, they want to *be* Superman.

In the Fawcett comics, they made this arrangement work by making the stories more about Billy Batson with Captain Marvel showing up to sort everything out. In fact, if CC Beck had had his way, Captain Marvel would barely have been in a story. It will be interesting to see how Jeff Smith plays this out.

I think the whole problem for Captain Marvel is that so much of what makes him neat flies in the face of comic-reading sensibilities today. That’s why I’m thrilled that Jeff Smith has brought The Big Red Cheese back (and Judd Winick, there is nothing wrong with that expression) in all his glory.

Billy is a seperate personality. Pure and simple. This isn’t Jekyll and Hyde. If that’s what you’re interested in, I would suggest you go read the Hulk or back issues of Malibu Comics Prime title if you can find them.

You guys keep looking at Captain Marvel as an alter-ego power fantasy for a little kid. That isn’t how Captain Marvel works. He’s not another personality, he’s the genie in the bottle!!

He’s Billy’s ace in the hole when he sees injustice. Billy learns from Cap and in some ways, Cap learns from Billy. He’s older… more experienced. He has the power of Zeus, the courage of Achilles and the Wisdom of Solomon. He is a totally different personality!!

Sorry. In the second paragraph I meant to type, He’s not just Billy’s grown up personality, he’s the Genie in the Bottle.

I prefer Billy and Cap as two separate entities, but even if a writer prefers them as the same person, I’m willing to work with that ONLY if Cap has the full emotionam maturity and reasoning ability of an adult after the transformation. I absolutely HATE when Cap Marvel is shown to be an adult that secretly has the mind of a child. Giffen and DeMatteis’ JLI I think has cemented this image of Cap in people’s mind and DeMatteis continued it in that bad episode of JLU that he wrote. The man-with-a-kids-mind dynamic also ruins the power-fantasy aspect because kids wants to be adults with an adults wisdom and smarts, not an adult with the same immaturity and lack of knowledge they have as children.

Why is changing Billy mentally into an adult less acceptable than the physical change he makes to become an adult? I’m not entirely sure that one is any less of a fundamental change in who Billy is than the other.

Also, I thought the preview of the origin was no less powerful for having been seen before. From the preview, I thought it was an incredibly powerful sequence. And did anybody else notice that Billy knew what the magic word was without having to be told?

It’s not less acceptable. It’s just less interesting today and it stands out a whole lot more, and it leads to a character with more heart as opposed to a MacGuffin who can just save the day.

I think the big distinction is whether you’re going to use Cap in an ongoing setting or not.

If you’re doing a lot of done-in-ones or a series with a beginning, middle, and end, or even something that’s ongoing but self contained, it’s fine, and possibly preferable to do with them as two people.

If you’re doing an ongoing set in a universe with a lot of other heavy hitters like Superman and Captain Atom, you need something to make him stand out a bit more, and Billy being behind the driver’s seat, his good nature combined with the problems of youth tempered by the wisdom of Solomon is a whole lot more interesting and prone to ongoing character development through issues. I thought Johns used him BRILLIANTLY in JSA.

Now if you’re looking to tell done-in-one superhero stories with a lot of action and adventure, where nothing changes by the end of the issue and you just have a lot of fun, then I figure either can work.

It’s just my opinion though.

Quibbles about Billy and Captain being different people aside, this is just so wonderful after reading the Trials of Shazam. What a steaming pile of crap that series is. This first issue just shows how completely and entirely off the mark Trials is.

I was totally going to bitch about the lack of a Captain Marvel review yesterday when you reviewed Fell. So I’m glad it’s here now.

Seems to me the easiest way to handle the two-seperate-people or tranformed-version-of-the-same-kid paradox is to just ignore it. Shouldn’t be too hard to write the character so that Billy/Captain Marvel can be read either way.

Some more things:

(1) Holy shit, Smith is one hell of a cartoonist. He’s got this Carl Barksian sense of SCOPE, but he might be even more versatile. There’s kind of some Kirby in there, too. Smith conveys size and power really well.

(2) Can’t wait for Mary.

(3) And on the negative: Whole thing felt a little rushed, and I wanted more set-up.

Really.

My favorite parts of Bone were right at the beginning where Smith was defining his world, so to speak. The parts that were more “This is how everything works in my fictional creation” than straight out plots. I wouldn’t have minded more homeless Billy, even. I completely agree with everything Cronin said about how kid’s entertainment shouldn’t be TOO warm and fuzzy.

Or maybe I won’t buy it, as it was sold out. Waiting on the reorder…

I much prefer the idea that CM is just Billy with an adult body and superpowers. I don’t like the “genie in a bottle” approach. BUT, if CM just has Billy’s brain, it’s ridiculous to expect him to ever say Shazam! and turn BACK into Billy. Why would he?

So, in order to have some semblance of internal logic, I admit that CM and Billy must, in fact, be separate entities.

But if Cap is just Billy in an adult’s body, what’s the point of his having the wisdom of Solomon? He either has the wisdom of Solomon and all the maturity it entails or he has the worldview and mindset of a child, meaning the claim of his having the wisdom of Solomon is meaningless. Either way, whether you consider them to be separate people or the same person, Cap with a kid’s maturity is just a dumb idea.

Exactly, someone with the wisdom of Solomon wouldn’t have gotten into the mess of being accused of being a pedophile anyway like he was in JSA. It makes no sense.

And why would he turn back? This was explored in by Alan Moore Miracle Man with the Kid Miracle Man character. Kid Miracle Man never changed back to human because why should he?

You can have the Wisdom of Solomon and choose not to listen to it.

I choose not to listen to good advice all the time. And I did even more when I was Billy’s Age.

Matt D,

It’s not he has access to wise advice, it’s supposed to be that he actually has the wisdom himself. Even if we went with your premise, if one has access to wise advice and chooses not to listen to it, then he’s unwise plain and simple, regardless of his age. And part of the allure of the wisdom of Solomon is that it’s supposed to be so fundamentally common sense, just and logical that even a child can see that it’s right. I know this from Catholic school when we had to read the book of Solomon. If a child can still choose an illogical unwise path in the face of wisdom as basic and persuasive as Solomon’s, that really makes the hero’s judgment questionable.

If Captain Marvel is a being with all the powers of Superman, but with an immature child’s inability to listen to reason like you say, then he’s just a “mildly retarded Superman” like Jeff Smith says. Like I said, whether you go with the two different people route or the one person route, the only thing I want is that you don’t have him act and think like a kid once he transforms because it totally negates the wisdom of Solomon claim. Also, I don’t think it fulfills any power-fantasy element of children to be adult and powerful yet still make the same childish mistakes you would when young.

“If you’re doing an ongoing set in a universe with a lot of other heavy hitters like Superman and Captain Atom, you need something to make him stand out a bit more, and Billy being behind the driver’s seat, his good nature combined with the problems of youth tempered by the wisdom of Solomon is a whole lot more interesting and prone to ongoing character development through issues. I thought Johns used him BRILLIANTLY in JSA.”

But why would you want to put Capt. Marvel in their universe?
He had his own one.
It worked.
He joined the DCU, he stopped working.

And they have to be seperate people, that way you get the comedy of Billy being fine and normal when talking to girls, but Cpat. Marvel being scared/nervous when talking to them.

Check your Bibles. SOLOMON had the Wisdom of Solomon — which is probably why they called it that — and he still ended up doing some outright stupid things and died a broken man.

And T., I’m not Catholic, but I don’t think y’all have a Book of Solomon in your Bibles either.

Our study bible in Catholic school had the Book of Solomon in it. You can see the books in this chart. I remember because it was in Catholic school I learned about that story where two ladies fight over the baby. Good point about the stupid things he did in the end though. Good thing Cap Marvel doesn’t have the libido of Solomon, which apparently undermined his wisdom!

“I much prefer the idea that CM is just Billy with an adult body and superpowers. ”

If that’s the case, how come none of the other Marvels change appearance?

My opinion is that making Billy and Captain completely separate personalities is the worst thing that can be done to the character. This child-like mind in an adult body is what makes the character unique. As pointed out, without that, Captain Marvel is just another flying muscleman. And switching bodies and minds completely is also old hat in the various comic book universes.

The problem is, it takes a great writer to understand the concept and use it well. Children of Billy’s age are not necessarily undisciplined or foolish. What they can be is wildly idealistic, and this is the trait that makes Captain stand out from the crowd. That, and being uncomfortable in certain adult social situations.

And this allows us to sympathize for the tragedy inherent in the character and admire Billy for being special in his own right. A homeless boy could never be blamed for lacking idealism, yet Billy has the strength of character to hang onto his in the face of all the ugliness our society can throw at him. Why, if he can turn into a superpowered man, is he still homeless? He could find treasure or do all sorts of stuff to make himself rich and comfortable as Billy.

The reason is, his idealism won’t allow him to use his powers for selfish reasons. His powers are a gift supposed to be used to help others, period. That’s idealism that puts even Superman to shame.

And speaking of Superman, the very best Captain story ever told was the recent team up, where Superman finds out Billy’s secret identity. When Superman asks the boy, in horror, “Who did this to you?” we realize for the first time what a terrible thing it is to place the responsibility of almost limitless power on a child. Yet Billy manages. That’s what makes the character interesting.