by Shazam! By now, almost everyone knows the magic word that turns young teenager Billy Batson into a superhero, and that magic word will also be the title of his new Shazam in progress! series by writer Mark Waid, artist Dan Mora and colorist Fernando Sanchez.
But the new title, which is part of “Dawn of DC”, will bring some changes to the Shazam family, with Billy Batson front and center, a new nickname for his superhero alter ego and a focus on returning to the more classic elements. Shazam! mythos while bringing Billy and his friends further into the 21st century.
Before Shazam! Released from #1 on May 2, Newsarama had the chance to speak with Mark Waid about his plan to make Billy Batson a fully formed hero with real stakes while preserving his long legacy, and even how Billy Batson’s portrayal by Waid in Kingdom Come factors in the relaunch.
Newsarama: Mark, I’m very happy to talk about Shazam! today because Billy Batson is one of my favorite characters of all time. You and Dan Mora are bringing Shazam back in its own title for Dawn of DC. What does this mean for you as a creative team and for Shazam as a character?
Mark Waid: Being part of “Dawn of DC” means following the same principles we have for Batman & Superman: World’s Finest, which is to go back to the basic versions of these characters and then develop them from there.
That’s not to say other Shazam Family characters won’t show up – they will. And that’s not to say we’re going to ignore everything that’s happened in the past, but that’s the tone. It’s a way of approaching the characters that feels clean and honors the past without feeling beholden, so you can pick up the first issue and go downstairs.
Nrama: You talked about respecting the story, the classic version of the character, what genre leads to one of the biggest questions I have for you. I heard Billy Batson’s superhero alter ego will be known as “The Captain” in this title. How did you land on this particular epithet? Were there other names that were considered?
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Waid: Of course. I mean, there were a million other names to consider. But you know, the two bigger ones weren’t available. Captain Marvel is obviously irrelevant, and Captain Thunder is also under someone else’s brand.
So he just needed a name he could use to refer to himself without saying the magic word. We won’t make a fuss about it, it won’t be on merchandise, you won’t see toys with the name “The Captain” on it. It’s more of a conceit for this title and in the sequel, just so he has a name he can say out loud.
Nrama: On that note, the magic word is a big part of this title, as Billy will have to battle the six Goodness Champions who provide him with his powers. How do they become a physical presence in this title? How do they work as antagonists?
Waid: Without giving too much away, they will fight for control of Billy, because the six are not necessarily on the same page anymore about what the Captain should represent, what kind of things he should do. And that will be an undercurrent of the first arc. It won’t be the focus of every issue, but it will be the running subplot.
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Nrama: I want to talk about Dan Mora, because he’s just a force of nature.
Waid: Yeah. LAW.
Nrama: How did you manage to get him to do double duty with World’s Finest and Shazam!, two titles in progress at once? It always does, right?
Waid: Yeah yeah. He is married to both books like me. And you know, frankly, if he had said “I have to leave World’s Finest to do Shazam!”, I’m not sure I would have stuck with either book. I mean, because I need him on both books, because he’s so good. But luckily, it’s a freight train when it comes to the speed at which it does these things. It’s a high-speed train.
And you know, we’ve been playing with this for almost maybe a year, maybe more in the background, this Shazam! was something we wanted to do. Make a few pages here and there to test it. But it was editor Paul Kaminski who worked the planning magic and made sure he was able to do both books.
Nrama: We’ve talked about the story of Shazam!, but it seems like for much of the past 10-15 years the focus has often been on Billy Batson and more on the rest of the family. Besides being the most classic take on the character, what makes Billy the right character to focus on here? What are your goals for Billy?
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Waid: The first objective is to make Billy a complete character. Not that he hasn’t been there before, but to really delve into what it’s like to have those powers. Why the hell would you go back from a superhero to a teenager? What’s it like to have those powers, and then not have those powers? What’s it like to be flying through the air and then the next moment just walking down the sidewalk at normal speed? Must be like walking through molasses.
So it’s Billy. Billy is the perfect character to talk about the friction between being a hero and a normal person. It’s basically a page straight out of Kingdom Come, isn’t it? He is the fulcrum on which rests the whole swing of the heroes.
Nrama: I’m glad you brought up Kingdom Come, because that’s obviously one of the most well-known times when you wrote Shazam. It’s a different version of the character, different circumstances. But you brought in elements from Kingdom Come into World’s Finest and some of your other recent work. Is this something we’ll see referenced in the new Shazam! Title?
Waid: You know, I hadn’t thought of that until you mentioned it, but it’s not the worst idea in the world. So let me put this in my back pocket. THANKS! [Laughs]
Nrama: Fair enough, fair enough. [Laughs] Earlier you mentioned that the Shazam Family would show up. What can you say about this?
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Waid: Yes, we’ll see the rest of the Shazam family, sooner rather than later. They appear in issue two. Because of Lazarus Planet and how his magic worked, you see in the first issue that Billy makes a real effort to figure out how to share his powers again. He can’t crack that nut yet.
It’s an ongoing process, and I don’t want to leave these children out of the adventure. At the same time, I thought it was really important to lean on Billy for this first issue. But we will see the children.
Nrama: I don’t want to get into the weeds too much by asking specifics about this, but I have to ask about my personal favorite, Tawky Tawny.
Waid: Yeah yeah. I mean, look, like I said, this book is the repository of the weird, the weird, the magical, and the bizarre, and so the fact that they have a living, breathing, and who basically talks like the house butler, all the kids take that literally at this point.
That’s why he’ll come across so clearly and without fanfare in the first issue, because with the Shazam Family, it’s like, “Oh look, we’ve got a dinosaur in the living room. Now we’ve got a tiger making our dinner.” It’s like that, they’re completely used to it now.
Nrama: A lot of that is really built into the character, going back to the Golden Age. How do you take that kind of idea and keep the fun of it, but bring it into a modern context? Audiences are almost used to this stuff, it doesn’t seem so foreign. How do we update these weird concepts and make them viable and still weird for today’s reader?
Waid: Part of it is just pouring my love into it. Part of it is really trying to show you why I think this stuff is fun and cool. And the challenge of this one, the challenge of the book, frankly, is to have fun and be humorous and do weird stuff, but at the same time not lose sight of the fact that it must be issues.
Because as someone who’s read literally every Shazam story from the Golden Age to not too long ago, I love those stories, I love this character, but the commonality of these golden age stories is that there is no stake. Captain Marvel finds a book that tells the future, you know, six pages, the end, it’s fun. But if you try to do it consistently with a DC character today, you really run the risk of feeling overwhelmed.
This character has to have stakes, the threats have to be there, the bad guys have to actually be threatening. And that’s the challenge of working on a book that is, from my point of view, at least half humorous.
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Nrama: You mentioned Billy Batson, as sort of the pivot of this balance between humanity and superhumanity in the DC Universe. How will this book carry that theme to the larger DC Universe? Will it intersect? Are we going to start seeing this bleeding from other places after a while?
Waid: There’s a villain that appears in the second issue that is very familiar to DC readers, and has been a staple in other DC Comics over the past year. I like to mix those things up, in terms of how it spreads out in how it can connect to World’s Finest, how it can connect to some of these other projects that I’m doing and still working on, because I like the idea of ​​having some sort of ability to feed into the modern DC universe and having that ability to crossover.
Nrama: What do you want readers to know going into this Shazam! to restart ? What do you hope they take away?
Waid: I hope they understand how special this character is and how unique he is in the DC Universe. And I hope they come away with new ideas about Billy and the captain, and how they work and how their brains work. Because I certainly came up with new ideas that surprised me as I thought about these characters and prepared the first issue.
Learn the weird but true Shazam family history.
