Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Comics NEWS! DCnU Captain Marvel


...and by DCnU Captain Marvel I mean Shazam!
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.
“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.
Since I'm a big fan of the character, I thought I had to make a comment regarding this new direction for the character.

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 Posted Image


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!)

1 comment:

  1. I really hate they took away the sash and I prefer the cape that is usually is on one side of his shoulder.

    ReplyDelete