In My Tommy Hilfiger Hoodie: DC Debuts Rebooted Shazam

DC Comics debuted a teaser image of the Gary Frank-redesigned Shazam (née Captain Marvel) in this morning’s New York Post. I’m guessing that writer / DC Chief Creative Officer Geoff Johns decided that the redesign of a niche character who’s been unable to carry his own book for around 20 years, and who’s appearing as a backup feature in Justice League, was news too earthshattering to relegate to the ghetto of the comics-related press… and further guessing that the Post ran with it due to a need to fill column inches thanks to a sudden unexpected dearth of Lindsay Lohan candid upskirt vagina pictures.

The story confirms that Shazam will be getting an updated origin story to go along with the new costume, and that his new powerset will include “a penchant for causing electrical appliances to explode.” The story also causes me to infer that Johns spent his summer vacation catching up on Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files novels.

All sarcasm aside, I am really looking forward to this reboot. As I’ve said before, Captain Marvel is a long-time sentimental favorite character of mine, and despite my reservations on how that first arc of Justice League wound up going, Johns is historically one of the most reliably delivering writers in mainstream comics.

And that is a cool picture of Captain Marvel – sorry, I am going to have a hard time calling him “Shazam” just because, as Johns said, “Shazam is the word most associated with the character.” If that’s a good enough reason to rename characters, I look forward to the announcement that Power Girl is being renamed “cleavage.”

Sure, my first instinct upon seeing it was to mutter, “Great! Give a teen superhero a hoodie! Next you can have his uniform pants hanging off the back of his ass! Because it’s still 1997, right?” But taking a step back, if part of the goal is to make Cap more innately magic-based in nature, you can do worse than turning that weird little flippy-cape into a wizard’s robe. I like it.

The new Shazam debuts in Justice League #7, which is solicited to drop on March 21st.