Convergence: Shazam #1

Possibly not safe for work!

No matter how heavy a person you are, I commend you on not being fatter. I just ate two Reese's Peanut Butter Eggs and I don't know why I'm not eating twenty more! They're so delicious! We should all be at least 100 pounds heavier than we all actually are. I applaud all of us for our willpower! People look at somebody like that guy that had to have a wall knocked out of his house to leave his bed and think there's something wrong with him. No fucking way. He just decided that he wasn't going to deny himself the pleasure of eating twenty Reese's Peanut Butter Eggs in one sitting. What I don't get is how we aren't all like that guy!

I gained about twenty pounds after my cat and best friend of fifteen years Judas died which puts me at about thirty pounds over the weight at which I feel comfortable. I gained the weight because I just decided fuck everything. I was going to eat a full bag of Oreos whenever I wanted because nothing fucking mattered. The thing is: why don't I think like that when I'm not depressed? The other thing is: I think like that when I'm manic!

Some people don't get fat because they actually treat food as a need and not as a fulfillment of a desire or a luxury. I absolutely do not fucking understand those people. My cousin Jay used to stop eating delicious food while there was still plenty left because he was "full." What the fuck is this "full" feeling?! All I know is that there is more delicious food to put inside of my stomach!

Everybody pat yourself on the back and help yourself to your favorite snack because you are thinner than you probably should be! We all are! Food is so fucking good!

Shazam's Fawcett City is being matched up with the Gotham City of the Gaslight Universe. I never read that universe but I think it has steam and corsets and fog and dandies. The issue begins at the best place any of these issues can begin! Planet Brainiac's speech is just ending and Billy Batson is standing there looking at a domeless sky and hoping that when he says his magic word, he'll be a massively muscled magic man again!

Also this issue was written by Jeff Parker so it might be about Shazam denying food to the people of Gaslight Gotham.

For some reason, Fawcett City's dome removal has been delayed although they've heard Telos give the drill to other cities. So Billy and Mary and Uncle Dudley and Tawny and the other ones all have to wait to turn into Marvels. Although Bulletman and the infantalized Bullet"girl" still have their powers! Whatever they are! I guess putting a bullet shaped bucket on their heads and flying around like idiots? They must use some of that technology that isn't quite improbable enough to have been shut down by the dome.

I'm going to have a third Reese's Peanut Butter Egg now!

Mary and Billy are kept busy acting like Hardy Drew and the Nancy Boys. They've got a mystery to solve and, by gum, they're going to solve it! Probably! Or maybe they'll just find a dark alley to kiss in and show each other their thingies! If I had been Billy's age and learned a magic word that turned me into a testosterone pumping man in a leotard, I wouldn't be able to fight crime ever! I'd just be walking around trying to hide my boner behind a math textbook and a Pee Chee folder!

Victim of Crime: "Help us, Captain Marvel! Help us!"
Me: "Umm...just a second! I'll be right...no, no. I have to, um, sit down in the corner for awhile."

Billy and Mary are following Uncle Dudley and Billy's boss Mister Morris because they've been acting strangely all year and now they've snuck off to do probably unspeakable things to each other. Unspeakable if you're a Christian, I mean! I'm from the Bay Area so whatever they're doing, I've probably seen it on television at least once while growing up.

I still haven't eaten my third Reese's Peanut Butter Egg yet! But I did go and grab it so I can stare longingly at it! I love you, Reese's Peanut Butter Egg.

Do you mean weird as in "my stomach feels warm and my labia seem to be swelling," Mary?

I scanned those two panels because I wanted to comment on young Mary's budding sexuality. But I also could have scanned the third panel as well and made some kind of young male prostitute joke about the orphaned Billy.

See? Jeff Parker, you cad!

I appreciate that Jeff Parker has really captured the tone of comics back in the old days. Every time you read one, it reads like a bunch of dirty pervs putting sexually coded messages into magazines they knew were being sold to young children who wouldn't understand the nasty shit they were reading.

This time it doesn't work out so well for Billy because he's scooped up by Mr. Atom! He's a gigantic dildo with arms and legs. He also grabs Mary in his fist and from the look on her face, she's not sure why she's feeling so tingly downstairs! I know, Mary! I know! It's the healthy healing power of vibrations!

"Onions, Billy! I feel like my head is going to blow off! In an extremely good way!"

Mr. Atom takes the kids (one of them is Freddy. Did I forget to mention Freddy joined up with the other two?) into the Monster Society of Evil's underground lair. There they find King Kull, the electrical engineer caveman, busy building something. Probably a bomb. It's always a bomb, isn't it?

Dudley enters with Mister Sterling Morris but it's not Uncle Dudley at all! It's...are you sitting down?!...Doctor Octopus's mind in Dudley's body! I mean Doctor Sivana! Oh no! It looks like the Marvels have finally met their match!

It isn't Dudley's real body. Sivana is just suffering from the curse of the dome in that whatever a person was shapechanged as when it fell, they remained in that guise. So Ibac has been stuck in the form of Sterling Morris for a year, and Sivana has been Dudley. Now they're throwing the kids in a cell with the real Dudley and Sterling just as Tawny the Tiger arrives to save them all!

As Tawny frees the kids, Mister Atom and King Kull enter to point out that the dome has fallen. And we all know what that means, right?

Captain Cheesecake! I mean Marvel!

The Marvels beat the crap, er, I mean tar out of the bad guys and bring the whole subway crashing down on everybody. When the dust clears, they look up into the sky to see a squadron of blimps attacking Fawcett City! It's the Gaslight Brigade!

Convergence: Shazam #1 Rating: Holy smoleys! What a terrific comic book! Jeff Parker nailed the tone! I love how this issue was a complete Billy Batson/Captain Marvel story where they investigate some strange occurrences, find the Monster Society of Evil at the heart of it, and subsequently defeat them handily. It's only after that tale is told that the Gaslight Blimps appear ready for part two. Fucking great job, Parker! And the art! Evan Shaner kicked my ass page after page and I just kept pleading for more! Loved this issue like a rented mule!

Why would anybody beat a rented mule? How cruel! I would love it and cherish it and feed it carrots while kissing it lots and lots!

Also, after having read it, I really feel awful about the inappropriate drawings I made beside Cap's head! Whoops!