The Captain has gone into space, having been told by Ted from Gorilla City that the Emperor of the Moon has plans to attack Earth. Which seems reasonable. After all, it’s Tuesday in the DC Universe.
As it turns out, longtime Doom Patrol annoyance Garguax is being misrepresented in terms of his intentions. What he’s actually up to is attending to the whims of Justice League of America villain Queen Bee.
The Big Red Cheese as Pepe Le Pew? Not quite – since the first issue of this new series by Mark Waid, Dan Mora and friends he’s been the victim of a godly game of tag. Patrons Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles and Mercury have been taking it in turns to dial up their personality characteristics to show Billy who’s boss. And this time it’s God of Horniness Zeus.
Things get even more complicated when Ted and co, waiting at Gorilla City ‘suburb’ Simian Island for all hell to break loose, get impatient and pop up to the moon themselves.
It’s fair to say this is a fun comic. Waid and Mora have been leaning into the more whimsical areas of the DCU, with this issue featuring not one, not two, but three villains from the Silver Age (I’m treating Ted as a Gorilla Grodd substitute). The Captain, nee Captain Marvel, is light-hearted but not an idiot, while back at the ‘Shazamily’ (just ‘No!’) home there’s a space dinosaur with a penchant for paperwork, and talking tiger Mr Tawny, unseen in this issue, but around. It’s all a bit silly, but far from stupid – Waid is a very smart writer, pressing nostalgia buttons but shining ‘em up at the same time.
Illustrator Dan Mora is also on great form, his breezy storytelling just what a script this fast moving and outrageous needs. That panel of Gorilla Ted firing forth is a total winner, while the Captain is every bit the friendly hero he was created to be back in the Forties. And has Garguax ever had such presence?
Ever-seductive Queen Bee Zazzala is suitably smouldering, looking especially great in Mora’s homage to JLA #23 (I wonder why Green Lantern and Green Arrow have been swapped out and Superman and Batman put in their place). I’d love her to return to the skimpier Mike Sekowsky costume and grow out her fulsome pink locks – alien queens should have all the sex appeal.
The colours of Alejandro Sánchez suit the space scenes but the rest of the book is painted in drab tones – Billy’s home, in particular, is a world of beige.
I’d love to see the talented Sánchez experiment with really bright colours, unashamedly Golden Age hues, perhaps in an annual – if any series would benefit, it’s this one.
Troy Peteri’s letters are suitably dramatic but not OTT. The in-balloon logos and sound effects are especially great. And talking of sound effects, I failed to mention this Pop Art masterpiece, which I’m guessing is Mora’s design.
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Mora colours his own work on the cover and the result is really rather splendid. And kudos to whoever came up with the rhyming copy – editors Rebecca Bohanan and Paul Kaminski, maybe?
I’ve liked this comic a lot since it started and this is the best issue yet. If you’ve not tried it, dive right in.
Too Dangerous For a Girl 2 
Up to this issue I’ve been feeling letdown, believing this was just another rehash of the trope where the recipient of godly blessings finds out the gods are evil asshats. It’s been WAY too prevalent of late and while I’m a convert to the Church of Waid I was worrying even he couldn’t salvage this. Now I get it. The gods aren’t evil. They’re just blind to their own faults as in mythology. It helps that the god of horniness takes over this issue. No one ever writes Zeus as learning his lesson, do they?
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Now that would be fun to read, but you’re right, he’s always awful.
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This book has been fun, but I’m still waiting for it to really click with me. The two-issue interruption that was the tie in to DC’s latest event didn’t help. Even with Waid as the writer, those issues felt like unnecessary fill-ins forced on the writer and reader. Also I do wish Waid had jettisoned the rest of the adopted family and gone back to just the original three “Marvel” kids. I suppose that given this was launched around the time of the “Shazam” movie sequel the idea was synergy. And given the characters add diversity to the title it might anger/disappoint some newer fans. But for now they just seem to clutter things up. And I feel like Waid isn’t quite sure what to do with them and they kind of take away page time from the others.
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Mark Waid was talking about Shazam on John Siuntres’ Word Balloon podcast last week and revealed that he has plans for the modern Lt Marvels…I suspect he’s come up with a way to sideline them right out of the book!
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Hey – thanks for the info. If he found an interesting use for them I’m okay with that. I just don’t think we should have, what, like 7 different Shazams running around? It dilutes the focus of the book. They may have served their purpose for the reboot Geoff Johns wrote back in the New52 and the series he was on afterward, and maybe they helped draw more viewers to the films. But like I said, I’m fine reading Waid’s take on just Billy Batson.
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I’m with you all the way!
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My guess would be, instead of sidelining them, he’s found a way to tweak their use of the magic word so that they can do it when the story calls for it, but can’t use it when the story is better served by a solo character. Waid doesn’t seem to want to write them out entirely; he just doesn’t want to be writing what would essentially be a team book.
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How do you know you’ve enjoyed a comic? When you get to the end and realize it over, but can’t believe you read it that fast!
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That would be it!
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