Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION Dr. Gym'll's Cultural Rarities Shazam Prep

This thread will be a mix of comics and other media, but I'm hoping the comics part is enough to justify it being here. I've decided to scrape off the cynical old man barnacles and not only try to look forward to Shazam, but to rediscover my childhood love of and joy in the character. So I'm putting together a giant binge of comics, live action, and animation to get myself pumped about the character. So I'm putting my list out for suggestions for omissions.

First, the non-comics stuff. I'm rewatching (or in a couple of cases watching for the first time):

The Republic Serial
The Filmation Live Action series
The 80s animated series
A few Batman Brave and the Bold episodes
The Superman/Shazam Return of Black Adam animated movie
The DC Nation shorts

Thanks to the miracle of DC's streaming service and Youtube, all of these things are readily available to me. Nothing else he has been in felt like it needed to be part of this celebration of the character to me.

Comics were harder. I found Amazon listings for two unavailable volumes of "Best of Fawcett's Captain Marvel." It listed their contents, so I am assembling those 25 issues to do represent the Fawcett era. Certainly, the few things that I felt needed to be on such a list made the cut.

Bronze Age, there are three things I really want, unless people sell me on something else.
JLA 135-137, Crisis on Earth S
The Superman vs Shazam tabloid
A sampling of Don Newton's work, and here is where I could really use some input. It's a bit long to read it all, but I don't know enough about it to distill it to a few issues. I know there are Don Newton fans in these parts, and I'm hoping they can make a recommendation here.

From all of the main continuity after Crisis all I really want to include are the Power of Shazam OGN, the first year of the ongoing, and the annual that introduced Thunder. The only other things I might want to include (Cap in the Giffen JL, Cap and Black Adam in JSA) are just not Marvel-centric enough to make the cuts. I'd be reading a bunch of stuff for the B-plots of books that otherwise don't belong.

Then the Monster Society of Evil miniseries, whatever the ongoing that spun out of that was called, Morrison's Multiversity take in case it's written by Good Morrison, and the current Johns take which I am trying out anyway.

The movie comes out in three weeks? Well, we'll see how much of that I can get in. Even if I can't get through it all, I should be in a very Marvel Family headspace when the movie comes out.

Going to try to keep at least the bare minimum of my Superman reread going. But if it gets put on hold for this short term project, I'm cool with that.

BFOB, I'd say the best way to go with the Don Newton/E. Nelson Bridwell Shazam Era would be to get the issues with the one extended serial, "The Monster Society Strikes Back" (World's Finest 264-267), and one of the done-in-one short stories (my personal favorite is "The Goes the Neighborhood," World's Finest 260.)

Thanks. That sounds like a plan.

The World's Finest are great, and as a bonus have Kid Eternity as a supporting character.

The follow up to Smith's Monster Society was "Billy Batson and the Magic of Shazam!", And is a fun take on classic Marvel Family stuff (compared to the Winnick run in the main DCU at the time which was... Not). The first part of the series was by Mike Knuckle, and the second half by the always great Art Balthazar and Franco (Tiny Titans, Superman Family Adventures). I liked both better than the actual Smith Mini.