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So my bugbear here, and it isn't one specific story. Captain Marvel (aka Shazam) is a fairly straightforward concept. Young Billy Batson is gifted with incredible powers and the ability to transform into an adult superhero known as Captain Marvel. The original Whiz Comics version of the character was sort of a split personality. Billy WAS and WASN'T Captain Marvel. They shared personality traits, thoughts and ideas but also viewed each other as different people. It was a very lighthearted sort of thing and it's understandable comics needed to address it. Modern comics danced between two ideas: 1) Billy Batson is the only one. When he transforms into Captain Marvel he gains the Wisdom of Solomon which tempers and alters his ideas and thoughts but that is fundamentally balanced by his childlike optimism and hope. 2) Billy Batson and Captain Marvel are different but Captain Marvel is tempered and aided by Billy and Billy is the fundamentally important part of the character. Regardless of the idea, the core concept here is that Billy Batson's youth and the idealism that comes from that youth is a central part of the character. Billy is defined as having a hard life. Prior to becoming Captain Marvel he was literally a hobo and prior to that he was raised by a cruel uncle who kicked him out onto the street after abusing him. Later versions of the character played with this but only slightly. (Billy's parents were murdered by the evil Black Adam and so-on.) A central core idea of this is that Billy has seen terrible things but retained his optimism and hope. It is a central important part of the character that he is fundamentally a Good Kid. Not a perfect kid, not a flawless kid, but a good kid whose ideals are based around that. He wants to help people, he wants to make things better, he wants to learn and he prefers to find solutions rather than just punch villains. Obviously there are stories that ignore this but these are not the ones I want to talk about. What I want to talk about is the New 52 Shazam. The New 52 Shazam is Captain Marvel as written by bitter adults. He is effectively the opposite of the usual Marvel. He's got the power but is written as a little poo poo. Not even a believable little poo poo but the kind of little poo poo you get when 40 year old people start talking about how kids these days only care about their X-Boxes and their Facebooks. Rather than trying to update how childlike optimism might play in the 2000s they just decided that modern kids are all self-absorbed shits. There's faint wavings at giving him a character arc where he learns but even this misses a fundamental part of what makes Captain Marvel work. He is Optimism. He is literally a child granted the powers of a superhero and wanting to do good with them. Even back in the 1940s this was a central conflict where he would be given godlike power and have to learn the proper way to use that power. There would be a conflict between what seems right and what is right. Captain Marvel would argue that they should fix downtrodden neighborhoods rather than punching villains, Billy Batson would learn that looking evil doesn't mean you ARE evil, and so-on. Sometimes it could be simplistic in the way that comics are but often times the mix of a kid in a godlike body meant the focus was on problems that couldn't just be resolved by hitting them because they know Marvel can do that. Captain Marvel shouldn't be about how kids these days need to grow the gently caress up and stop caring about their X-Boxes so much, it should be about the childlike optimism to change the world for the better and how that can balance with real-world challenges.
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Dec 3, 2015 22:48
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Gaz-L posted:I don't think it's meant to shake a fist at "those drat kids" anymore than Kamala Khan being into Tumblr, fanfic and MMOs is. It absolutely is. The major difference is that Kamala is celebratory. She is dorky and cheerful and her interests are shown as positive or neutral. Modern Shazam is shown abusing his powers for money or caring more about his X-Box than anything. Billy isn't shown as being interested in kid things. (Which is what other versions of Marvel are.) He is shown as being That drat Kid. And 'making dumb decisions because that is what kids do" is again, not the same thing. Billy has always done that. That is a central part of the character and why Wisdom of Solomon is an important part of his powers because it can temper him being a dumb kid. The new stuff is in a very different tone from the older Marvel stuff I enjoyed or stuff like Ms. Marvel. Edit: Like, Billy doesn't have to be "Holy Moley, I need to get to the sock hop and do my homework" and that would ring pretty hollow too unless you were doing an intentional throwback. Shazam and the Monster Society of Evil or even the recent Shazam Convergence issues show how to do versions of the character that are more modern without being full Nu52. ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 23:57 on Dec 3, 2015 |
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Dec 3, 2015 23:53
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