Sunday, July 13, 2025

Sunday Splash Page #383

"Say the Magic Word," in New Champion of Shazam #3, by Josie Campbell (writer), Evan Shaner (artist/colorist), Becca Carey (letterer)

Due to circumstances I'm unaware of, Billy Batson sealed himself up inside the Rock of Eternity about 3 years ago, our time, taking all that Shazam magic with him. But then he had a vision and sent the power (and a magic talking bunny) to Mary, so she could be a champion. Unfortunately, Billy's timing sucks, because Mary was just about to start college somewhere she could be herself, rather than part of a group, and now that's over.

(It strikes me as weird that Hoppy tells Mary she's got to adjust to being stronger, because she's not sharing the power with 5 other people - her siblings - but somehow Billy only had enough power to send to one of them.)

So Mary ends up back at home, looking after her siblings (because their adoptive parents are missing.) Instead of going to Vassar, she going to Fawcett Community College, 'the most soot-covered campus in the country.' She's fighting giant crocodiles and weird shadow guys with phones in their chests, and dealing with Internet jackholes griping about not wanting a girl superhero in their town.

Campbell's take on Mary is that she's the planner, the one who tries to prepare and cover all the angles. It makes her the responsible one of her siblings, but also means she gets thrown off her game by unexpected stuff, and that it's easy for things to get inside her head. When Hoppy appears inside her bag with a message from Billy, she tries to tell him no thanks, she just wants to be a normal college student, forgetting she's having an argument with a rabbit in a crowded lecture hall. When she can't stop a giant, magic crocodile and flees from reporters, all the comments and jokes on social get to her. Even more so when one of the mystery bad guys can turn those words into a sort of magic weapon against her.

Shaner gives Mary a wide range of expressions and body language, and can make her arguing with a rabbit look almost normal. Most of the bad guys are just human-shaped shadows with a glowing rectangle in their chest, but it actually works very well as a contrast to Mary. For all their talk about how much better they are, they hide themselves, while Mary's out there in broad daylight, bright colors, face uncovered for the whole world to see. The criticism she gets hurts, but she takes it, while these goobers she's fighting would no doubt insist it doesn't matter, but they hide from it.

By the end of the mini-series, Mary's family is back together (minus Billy), so I guess she's not going back to Vassar. Then she gets a vision of some warning from Billy, as something was going to happen related to that Lazarus Planet event. Which, again, I didn't read, so I don't know what the result of that was.

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