...and by DCnU
That's right, there's going to be a name change.
Shazam! With one lightning-infused magic word, DC Comics has relaunched one of its most iconic characters, reviving the superhero known since 1939 as Captain Marvel and renaming and supercharging him with a heavy double dose of mysticism and magic.Since I'm a big fan of the character, I thought I had to make a comment regarding this new direction for the character.
“We changed his name [to Shazam] for a lot of reasons,” said Chief Creative Officer Geoff Johns. “One of them is that Shazam is the word most associated with the character, so we just felt it made sense — a lot of people already thought that was his name, anyway.”
With a new origin, a cowl, a lightning bolt on his chest, and a penchant for causing electrical appliances to explode, Shazam still bears similarities to the original hero, including the power to change from feisty teen Billy Batson into a superhero by uttering the magic word that is now his name.
The new Shazam debuts March 21 as a side story in Justice League No. 7.
“His place in the world will be far more rooted in fantasy and magic than it ever was before,” Johns said.
Well, first off the new spine, with the play on electicity seems like a nice move.
...and that's all the good I can say about this reimagining.
This is the new
Captain Marvel
, excuse me, Shazam?!
Bleh... too much Assassin's Creed in the hood, not enough old school flying mystery man with a cape anymore...
And I'm not talking "nerd continuity" and stuff.
I don't need to know much about a character (which in this case...I'm mostly familiar with Jeff Smith's recent interpretation) to know you should always respect a minimum of its look and design before revamping him :/
But here...the more I look at it, the less I like it...
Look, Billy Batson's not supposed to be gritty, badass or any of that. Just a good hearted clean superhero.
This fancomic page summarize what i mean and is a lot more in-character than that pic released by DC officially -> http://1.bp.blogspot...tain-marvel.jpg
Anyways, here's two drawing I just did today (one for my "Daily Sketch Challenge").
Since I'm not digging the new gritty/mature/badass look, I decided to go full-cartoon here
I remade my original sketch (today's DSC), which was New 52-Billy, with the classic Billy Batson I like over it!
(if you want to see this and even more, check out my deviantArt gallery!)
