John August's blog gives me cause for concern regarding the Shazam! movie.

Apr 9, 2007 at 11:33 AM
6 comments

John August, the man tapped to pen the Shazam! movie, has written a blog entry called "A Captain Marvel Reader" and a passage from it has caused quite a stir amongst the Internet crowd:

"DC publishes hardcover anthologies that gather up decades’ worth of Captain Marvel comics. If I were writing a dissertation on the evolution of the Captain Marvel character, these would be invaluable. But I’m not. So every time I read one of these, I’m struck with the same realization I encounter trying to watch The Honeymooners or a black-and-white movie: Wow. Old things suck.

Yes, I know that will piss off the vintage comics fans, who insist that the original incarnations are the purest forms of a character. But what you quickly realize is that old-time comic books were awkwardly written, crudely drawn, and bewilderingly inconsistent with their rules. They were making up the art form as they went along, and today’s comic books are better for the accumulated wisdom."

I, for one, like the Honeymooners. But he does have a point about Golden Age of Comics. They were awkwardly written and crudely drawn. Mind you, the majority of my experience comes from reading the All-Star Comics Archives, where each issue featured a gun-wielding thug being able to get the drop on Green Lantern, whose ring could make anything his heart desired.

But the Golden Age Captain Marvel has a charm. It was different than anything that came out at the time. It had a talking tiger as a supporting character and one of its best villains was a worm wearing glasses.

Sure, the stories might have been crude compared to the comics nowadays, but I was hoping for a little more along the lines of the spirit of these books for the movie. But since August says kind words about Judd Winick's First Thunder and Trials of Shazam, methinks he is going for a more modern, grim and gritty approach.

I find that usually I bemoan the fact that things don't stay the way they are. I know that sometimes change is good. But I thing Captain Marvel loses something when you try to update him. That's just my opinion.

Bill

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I'm pretty critical of Judd Winick most of the time. It's pretty much a matter of public record that I dislike a good 90% of his output at DC. But First Thunder and what I've read of Trials of Shazam are excellent and kind of decent, respectively.

I agree with what August is saying to a degree, but think that his assumption that 'classic' denotes a lack in quality is flawed.

What does this all mean? Captain Marvel is a difficult character to write. Where Superman and Batman and whoever else has had the benefit of generational reboots every few decades, the Big Red Cheese never has. So, if you're writing a movie, you've basically got a choice between Winick's somewhat more burdened take on Billy Batson and Tall Marvel, a talking cartoon tiger, and a guy named Captain Nazi.

To be fair, I didn't read First Thunder. I read the first issue of Trials, though and wasn't all that impressed. Although, it is nigh impossible to judge a series on a first issue these days.

I;d like to think an alternate choice would be Ordway's run on Power of Shazam. That balanced the classic and the modern quite well, as I recall.

Touche.

“The project’s really, really exciting. Everybody involved, from the writer [John August] to the producers and [the director] Pete Segal, is very passionate about it,” (The Rock) Dwayne Johnson told MTV News. “We’ll see what happens.”
“I didn’t know that much about it until I talked to Pete about it – talked to John August about it – and then I started talking to a lot of fans about it, and they started educating me on it,” he confessed.

So, uh... the proposed star knows nothing about the character, the screenwriter refuses to do the research and is seen as an 'authority' on the concept by said uninformed star.

Cue train wreck, start up the CC Beck spinner.

I had high hopes when William Goldman (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Princess Bride) was writing it, because he is a great writer. And, not to get too fanboy-ish, but wouldn't the Rock make a better Black Adam than Captain Marvel?