Other aspects don’t ring true, such as the local thug preying on the homeless not taking a warning from Captain Marvel to leave Billy alone, and while Smith attempts a more logical basis for some of the series’ more out there concepts, he’d have been better leaving well enough alone. Part of the problem is Smith’s very leisurely pacing, with extended scenes of the orphan Billy Batson enduring homeless hardship on the streets. Given his stunning success with Bone, it seemed a fair bet that Jeff Smith was the man to relaunch the Shazam! Captain Marvel in a new child-friendly format, but it never quite gels. Tawny, the talking tiger is now just that, via mystical means, and Mary Marvel is much the same, if drawn to look younger than is traditional to match the age and appearance of Billy. A familiar looking Sivana is no longer a nutty scientist, but the Attorney General, while Mr Mind, the surprise revelation in the original story is now a giant invading alien. Smith takes the familiar characters from Shazam! and although it might not seem that way, his fundamental alterations are largely cosmetic.
Having established that, Smith steers the story in a different direction. In detailing how Billy and Captain Marvel share the same body, Smith is very faithful to the original sequence of the kindly old wizard deeming Billy worthy and endowing him with Captain Marvel’s powers to fight the seven deadly sins on Earth. Jeff Smith uses the themes without the plot, creating something original while re-booting the Shazam! franchise. It ran in eight page segments for over two years in Captain Marvel Adventures.
The original ‘Monster Society of Evil’ story was a landmark in the 1940s when the only serialised comic strips were in the newspapers.
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