The trials continue! When we last left our hero, Freddy was halfway through his trials, having just encountered Sabina, who was competing for the powers of Shazam. In this half of the story, we’ve got an art change, a new Marvel (sort of), and a change in the acronym!
Written by Judd WinickCover by Howard Porter
Illustrated and colored by Howard Porter and Mauro Cascioli
Lettered by Rob LeighFreddy must find Hercules for his next trial, which is considerably more difficult than he expected, since Herc is behind bars!
Judd Winick does a nice job bringing some new ideas to this story without losing the essential elements of a good Marvel family story. This whole era of DC was soft reboots, and Winick handles that with aplomb, never really sacrificing the past for the future. While the series feels, in some ways, rushed, there’s a lot here to enjoy, even when things are a little rushed and/or simplistic.
A lot of these issues have to deal with Sabina, the person ‘in line’ for the powers of Shazam, in terms of order of succession. Her story is a tragic one, but any sympathy that may be applied to her is wasted pretty quickly, as there is almost nothing after her initial childhood trauma that gives you any sense of her being flawed or misunderstood. Her life went from simple to evil, with little place for anything else.
That said, she has a great visual look, established by Porter, but really accelerated by Mauro Cascioli, who took over the book with issue #10. It’s odd how Black Adam is never once mentioned in these stories, but his look, with some red added in, is used for Sabina’s costume. Sabina is certainly built up to be a formidable opponent for Freddy, and while his competence is never really in question, Winick does a nice job of building up doubt in him.
One of the best parts of this batch of stories is how Atlas is handled. Instead of physically holding up the world, Atlas’s job is to basically troubleshoot life on Earth. He’s making millions of little changes to the daily grind; helping a bus driver miss a crash, rewiring an outlet so a house doesn’t burn down, etc. It is never exactly explained how those things still happen, or why certain things are avoided/fixed and others aren’t, but it’s still a fun interpretation of the character.
It’s also creative how Winick takes him off the table, and replaces the second A in Shazam with Apollo instead. This is when Cascioli comes on the book, and his Apollo is reminiscent of the classic Marvel Comics interpretation of Hercules, albeit with more midriff showing. This Apollo has built a life for himself outside of being a god, and is sad to leave that life. He and Freddy battle for who gets to take on the Atlas mantle, and Apollo finally yields, though only giving Freddy half his power, reserving the other half for when he eventually finds a replacement for Apollo. I thought, for sure, that this would be how Sabina would be redeemed, but I was incorrect.
An area where I was correct was in guessing that Zareb would wind up to be Zeus in disguise, as he was always just a bit too confident/helpful as Freddy’s guide. It was still a well executed reveal and, along with Tawky Tawny showing up, one of the pleasant occurrences that can’t quite be called a surprise.
There is a lot introduced here that doesn’t really get addressed/wrapped up, like Mary’s coma, or what exactly Billy’s new role as Marvel would entail. Freddy is left with Zeus basically saying “you need to not be a hero for awhile, because I have more important things to do,” which both writes him out of future stories for a bit and gives DC a chance to do something new with Freddy. Sadly, the former is what wound up happening.
Next week, we pick up with Mary in [gulp] “Countdown to Final Crisis.” Pray for Mojo.
