Some thoughts about Shazam #12

Is Shazam as lame as he think he is?

Billy is starting to doubt his abilities as a hero and to gain some confidence he will need the help of one of the greatest heroes, Batman.

Yeah, this is some sort of Bat-fanboy summary and that's because that's pretty much what this issue is.

At first I was pretty excited to see the return of this series but I quickly realized that this wasn't written by Geoff Johns even before I hit the credits and why did I realize that so quickly? Because the story opens with Billy and Freddy talking about how lame Shazam's villains are. Every decent comic fan knows that Captain Marvel/Shazam's villains are really good, they're so good that they have been constantly used in other books even when the main character himself wasn't appearing anywhere and Johns especially knows that. The one responsible for this issue is Jeff Loveness who I only know from one of the most mediocre Tales of the Dark Multiverse issues so this is not much of a surprise after all.

Then the Batman fanboyism start with the kids talking about how cool Batman's villains are and of course, both the Scarecrow and Batman appear out of nowhere with Billy learning how cool Batman is and it's all so nauseating. Yes, this is a filler issue but pretty much anyone could have written a better story by implementing the source material instead of devoting it to one of the most overused characters ever.

Brandon Peterson's artwork is decent with expressive characters and clear storytelling.

Aside from that, this is perfectly skippable and I miss Johns.