Review: Shazam And The Seven Magic Lands

Quick Summary

Pros: The volume starts out extremely fun and has a lot of imagination and creativity within. The book’s main narrative and several of the subplots receive satisfying conclusions. The majority of the collection’s artwork looks great.

Cons: The narrative ends up being very cluttered as the work progresses, with several story arcs actually making the book worse. Some of the book’s artwork doesn’t fit well with the majority of it.

Overall: This book has several hits and a few misses. It has plenty of creativity, fun, and character development. Plus, the conclusion manages to provide a mostly satisfying end to the read. The biggest problem is that the narrative often feels overly cluttered, with some plotlines distracting from others. In the end, this is still a fun and worthwhile read, especially for readers who enjoy the Shazam Family or those who like comics with a Silver/Golden age flair.

Story

Shazam and the Seven Magic Lands, by Geoff Johns, is an enjoyable, if slightly flawed, read. The book starts out great. It introduces some really cool and creative concepts and sets the heroes off on an adventure that is pure comic book fun. Unfortunately, things start to get cluttered as the book progresses. The narrative becomes less fun and more chaotic, especially as more and more heroes and villains are added to the mix. The conclusion manages to tie things up alright and the major story arcs receive a nice conclusion. However, the book ultimately ends up feeling like a good story that could have been great.

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Shazam and the Seven Magic Lands starts out wonderfully. The adventures of the Shazam Family are immediately fun and filled with creativity. These are heroes who are actually enjoying being heroes, even when things start to go awry, and the worlds they are exploring are incredibly interesting. Meanwhile, in the background, a threat from Mister Mind and Doctor Sivana looms. Overall, the beginning of the book feels like a comic from the Silver or Golden age of comics, where fun adventures and intense imagination were all that was required to tell a great story.

Unfortunately, things start to get worse as the read progresses. The exploration of the Magic Lands essentially comes to an end, leaving most of the lands only barely explored. Then, the Shazam Family is forced to deal with interference from Black Adam, the arrival of Billy’s father, instability with their powers, and the reappearance of the Wizard all at once. None of these story arcs are bad on their own, but the way they are all jammed into this portion of the read undercuts them all. For example, the Seven Deadly Sins, who were a major threat in the previous volume, join the fight but have little to no impact and ultimately disappear from the story entirely.

The worse offender here ends up being the inclusion of Superboy-Prime. His role in this story feels like something that should have been the centerpiece of an entire story arc. Instead, it is tacked on to the end of this one. While I always enjoy seeing Prime, I felt like his role here actually diminished the quality of this story.

Luckily, Shazam and the Seven Magic Lands does manage to bring together several of its key storylines in the conclusion. The twist surrounding Mister Mind and the ultimate battle against him are well executed and give the main narrative in this book a satisfying conclusion. This also leads to a successful resolution of the narrative surrounding Billy’s father. Even Black Adam’s story ends up with a neat ending, even if it wasn’t quite developed enough overall.

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Art

The majority of the artwork in Shazam and the Seven Magic Lands looks great. Both Dale Eaglesham and Marco Santucci provide work that looks beautiful and fits the tone of the work perfectly. The artwork here brings the Magic Lands to life and gives them each a unique flair. Plus, colors from Michael Atiyeh help tie everything together and further emphasize the unique differences from one Magic Land to the other.

Unfortunately, the chapters with work from Scott Kolins end up looking a little strange within this collection. Typically, I really enjoy Kolins’ heavily stylized work. However, this particular style doesn’t look that nice when sandwiched between far less stylized work by the collection’s other artists.

Continuity

Shazam and the Seven Magic Lands is technically an independent Shazam series. However, it directly continues and heavily references the narrative from Shazam! (Review).

This Shazam series ends here. However, Shazam’s adventures continue in Shazam!: To Hell and Back.