SHAZAM #10: Prime Reading Material

It should come as little surprise at this point that the Monsterlands were not simply a home to monsters but something far more sinister. Johns reveals in this issue that the sealed off Monsterlands are a prison containing the Old Gods, seven gods locked away by the Wizard Council in order to keep magic all to themselves. And Sivana and Mr. Mind plan on blowing the doors right off. Except for one particular denizen of the Monsterlands, that is.

Superboy Prime makes an appearance as the smallest and 8th prisoner of the Monsterlands. Of course this is not Johns’ first go-around with the character, having been a central figure in Infinite Crisis, but after much speculation, this book was not the book I would have expected Superboy Prime to show up in. That short few panels was exactly the shot in the arm this series needed to remind fans of why we signed up to read this book in the first place. All of a sudden, with a single issue, excitement can’t help but be revived.

Once again, this issue features multiple artists in what has been a standard convention for the series. This time, however, the shift is not clean along narrative lines, with Kolins providing art for the final sequences at the SHAZAM Home. Eaglesham’s clean style contrasted by Kolin’s more stylized, rougher style is a contrast that works quite well when the story calls for a tonal shift from scene and setting to another but in this case, seeing Kolins take over a setting previously established by Eaglesham proves jarring and shunts the reader out of storytime.