While part of me likes the idea of Sivana first encountering Mr. Mind as a tequila bottle worm, the rest of me realizes this is an idea probably best forgotten.
from Shazam! The New Beginning #4 (July 1987) by Roy & Dann Thomas and Tom Mandrake
(For the nitpickers, here’s Cecil explaining the whole Tequila worm thing.)
As a life-long Captain Marvel fan, I believe “Shazam! The New Beginning” is something best left forgotten. Absolutely hated that series.
Tom Mandrake is a very good artist, but he’s a terrible choice to do a Captain Marvel series. His art works best on dark, moody fare like the Spectre. Captain Marvel desperately needs an artist with a light touch. As you can see from the page that was posted — it’s not a very good fit.
That was intentional – they were trying to do a darker vision of CM. That fit in with much of what was going on with comics at the time. Ultimately, a darker CM didn’t seem to add anything.
I re-read this about three or four years ago. Better than I remembered it, but still not that great.
I love Captain Marvel, but I can’t stand anything that DC has done with the character. Looking forward to the collected (original) “Monster Society of Evil” (which has apparently been pushed back to next year) and Chip Kidd’s new book on the golden age version of the character (later this year).
Yeah, I wasn’t terribly fond of this series. Still, one of the amusing things about reading Thomas’s ALTER EGO magazine is just how many variations of reviving the Marvel Family he worked on over the years, many of them which look like they’d have been even worse than this.
Awkward as New Beginning may have been, the follow-up serial that ran in Action Comics Weekly was just plain dire. They attempted to introduce an updated Captain Nazi – created by a skinhead group – and it just didn’t work well at all. There’s a promise of a Shazam ongoing at the end of that story, and obviously that never happened. Probably for the best.
While I wish that Roy Thomas had gotten his chance to write an on-going Shazam series, I’ve got to admit that this wasn’t a set-up and artist for the character that really appealed to me. John B****’s pitch that helped derail it wasn’t any better. Thank Heaven Jerry Ordway stepped in.
It’s really a damn shame that the Bridwell/Newton/Schaffenberger team was relegated to the the back of World’s Finest, though.