I’m not a regular reader of Justice League, but picked up this issue to see what Geoff Johns and company would do with Captain Marvel nee Shazam. There isn’t much of a plot here, but more of a series of bullet points writer, Geoff Johns, made sure to hit. -Billy Baston in ominous dungeon like surroundings led by voice -Voice leads to dying wizard -Wizard deduces Billy is a d-bag -Wizard realizes there’s some good in Billy -Wizard has no choice but to give him the power of Shazam -Billy turns into Shazam and returns home committing vandalism with new powers to impress friend -Billy/Shazam save mugging victim for $20 -Pandora nonsense serves as essentially a backup Outside of the very lean plot, John’s script suffers a few other hiccups. There is no indication why Billy Baston is in said dungeon/castle/cave/whatever. Sure, we find out the wizard summoned him there, but did he have Billy stumble upon it, did he fall down a rabbit hole, was he beamed in? We’ll never know from the info given in this issue. Billy states he’s fifteen, but acts like he may be eight. He touches one of a row of seven identical pedestals and is greeted by a holographic looking image of Pride. He then runs down the row, tapping each one in rapid succession, laughing. This doesn’t seem like the behavior of a fifteen year old. There are other instances of this sprinkled throughout the issue. The wizard examines Billy’s life to see if he is “pure good,” and determines he is unworthy. Billy gives the wizard a speech about how there’s no such thing as pure good and believing in it is a good way to get trampled on. This speech feels like it’s been given a million times before by a million different characters. It makes Billy, despite his age, come across even more shallow than inteneded. After Billy’s speech the wizard, again examines Billy to see if there’s any good in him (why this didn’t show up on his original scan in beyond me). The wizard notices some of Billy’s good deeds and say, “Eh, it’ll have to do.” I mean this whole time the wizard is going on and on about how only one of pure good can posses the power of Shazam, and how he’s been searching for years to find such a individual. Then here comes Billy Baston with his clichéd little woe-is-me speech and the wizard just gives up. Is this the first time after millennia of searching the wizard has been, like, “Eff, good enough.” This thought never crossed his mind previously? When the wizard sees Billy good deeds one is of him feeding a tiger (unsurprisingly named Tawny) a steak through a cage. One has to assume this is a tiger at the zoo. How is this a good deed? Is the zoo starving the animal? It the wizard a member of PETA and all zoos are evil? Is it a half assed way to introduce Tawny? The dialogue is often stilted and unnatural. I’m not sure if this is Johns attempting some sort of throwback or just poor writing. Lines, like, “Listen, Chester, that stuff might work like candy on six year-olds...” are completely jarring. Is Chester some sort of call back to previous continuity? The one scene the truly chapped my ass, though is when Shazam witnesses a mugging, which happens to be going down right next to where he is. The woman being mugged exclaims she's carrying presents for the children's hospital. This is completely unnecessary. Why? Would we sympathize any less if she were just being mugged? Gary Frank's art is always very good. I think it suffers a bit going straight from pencils to colors. It looks over rendered in places. I try not to be one of those his-old-stuff-was-better sort of guys, but I do miss the smoother, wider lines of Cam Smith from back in the day. Ultimately the story, or lack thereof, can’t be saved and as many of DC #0 were given a lackluster origin retelling crammed into far too small of a package.