Withdrawal

This comic is 100% true, at least in the sense that Trav’s internet went out.

I tried something a little different with the art today, just a simple tweak of the pen settings in Manga Studio. I like it, but I’m not sure how it will hold up in the long run.

Comics You Should Read!

Superman/Shazam!: First Thunder

Judd Winick - Writer

Joshua Middleton - Artist

Nick J. Napolitano - Letterer

First Thunder serves as a Year One of sorts for Captain Marvel. While not an origin story, for that see Power of Shazam! by Jerry Ordway, it’s Captain Marvel finding his legs as a superhero. Comic time is a very fluid concept, but this story takes place at the beginning of the “Second Age of the Great Heroes” as it is called in the opening narration of this book. The heroes we know today were just appearing and making their mark on their respective cities.

Now, I could recommend comics to you all day long, and I still would have a stack for you to read when you’re done, just ask Tiff. But the point of me telling you about First Thunder is it’s a story anyone can pick up and read with little or no prior knowledge. Judd Winick gives a lot of information through captions and narration and supplements this with the stories Superman and Captain Marvel share after meeting each other. Winick doesn’t want you to get lost in the mythology. He want you to appreciate the story, which is excellent.

Captain Marvel and Superman team-up to take on villains, both human and super-natural. The parallels between Captain Marvel and Superman are obvious, and played up by Winick, right down to to Dr. Sivana and Lex Luthor both being evil scientist in charge of multi-national conglomerates. The real difference between the two is the fact that Captain Marvel is really just Billy Batson, a young boy. Billy is both in awe of Superman, as most children would be, and happy to talk to someone who might understand his problems. It’s a fun and emotional story that shows the vulnerable and human sides of both these larger than life heroes.

Joshua Middleton isn’t a very well known artist. He’s done several covers for both Marvel and DC, but this is one of the few books where he did all the art. While some of his faces are off, his line art and coloring really fit characters with a primary color motif like Superman and Captain Marvel. Both characters look larger than life, and the villains all look menacing and evil, whether they are the mystical Eclipso, the older sneering Dr. Sivana, or even the suave, confident Lex Luthor. The art allows the story to go where it wants to without being limited.

Winick and Middleton really went all out with this series and I would love for them to be given another shot at the characters somewhere down the road. It truly shows comics can be complete self dependent and still add to the universe as a whole. Just remember, we all were clueless about comics at some point.