Some thoughts about The New Champion of Shazam #4

Who is the champion of this world?

Mary has just learned that one of the teachers from her college has been controlling her own students and now is up to her to stop her but there's an even bigger threat coming.

This series comes to an end and sadly, my opinion of this conclusion is the same as most of the entire story.

Jossie Campbell tries to bring closure to the whole "plot" she has been creating and let's start with the positives because there are a few things that I like... well, more like one single thing. Revealing that one of the teachers that Mary has been interacting with as Georgia Sivana, the often forgotten daughter of Doctor Sivana, is a pretty interesting choice and actually creates a fitting antagonist for someone like Mary because of their similar backgrounds from an intellectual level.

The negatives are pretty much everything else.

Let's start with the classic use "Oh, you hate this version of Shazam because she's female!" and Campbell is far from subtle about it. Presenting a lot of the villains as complete stereotypical online misoginists that simply can't accept the fact that there's a woman using the Shazam name is just cringey by itself but what makes it even cringiest is the stuff those caricatures say ("She-Zam" might be one of the laziest insults ever invented and considering that Campbell is the one that came up with it, is just doesn't speak too well about her writing). Speaking of writing, is still overwritten as hell, especially when Georgia starts explaning her whole plan to Mary with every single detail and there's absolutely no self-awareness about how clunky the exposition is. Finally, the conflict finishes just as quickly as it started and in a pretty unsatisfying way to boot which makes me feel like all of this was a waste of time and, considering the Shazam Mary series ends with this, makes it even worse.

Doc Shaner's artwork remains the perfect fit for this universe due to the clean and classic style he brings to the table but once again, there's barely anything interesting to depict here.

This book was a letdown as a whole. I sure hope that Mark Waid does something better to compensate now.