Shazam! #8: You’re in My House Now

Shazam! #8 picks up with the destructive battle between The Captain and Black Adam, which resulted in the destruction of Billy‘s home. One of the most exciting things about this series is that everything has some sort of meaning in some sort of fashion. The first issue of this series, a paperwork pushing auditor, who also happens to be a T-Rex, seemingly showed up in a random bit of fun to help establish the tone of this series. Cut to this story arc, that plot thread has come full circle with the rest of the T-Rex’s species returning to earth to reclaim their auditor. With all of that groundwork being laid, this issue concludes a short two issue arc that proves that all of that had some meaning after all.

Mark Waid and Goran Sudzuka prove that there’s a lot of fun to be had when the stakes are personal and the subject matter is wacky. It is almost a sigh of relief to read a regular, DC comic book, where the world is not going to be destroyed or the lives of the universe are not being threatened. The stakes here are only revolving around Billy and his families, desire for a new home and their existence as a foster unit. This makes the subject matter a lot more personal to Billy and those around him, so that you don’t have to look out into the greater DC universe in order to find out why the characters are acting the way they are. This self-contained, expressive storytelling allows the reader to intimately get to know the characters involved, and truly care for them when bad things happen.

This art clearly was a break from the regular story that served as a building block for the next stage of this new characterization for the titular character. The arc before this revealed that this character was going to almost go back to the origins in the way that the power set worked. This was kind of explored in the first issue of this arc, but it was not mentioned again in Shazam! #8. This series has worked so well and its coherence and cohesion so it was kind of bizarre to see this aspect not being brought up in this issue, although this issue does Focus more on other aspects of the story, things that may show up later.

The art here is still fantastic, although it’s not going to be the same art style that was in the first arc because of the shift and direction. That being said, Sudzuka and colorist Ive Svorcina do an excellent job capturing the imagination and wonder that would come from a series about a boy who transforms into an all powerful man with fantastic powers. If this art team was to stay on for the rest of the series it would still read just the same, and be just as delightful as the first arc.