Panel Vision - 9 Possible Characters for Shazam 2

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Judging by its sizable opening I’m assuming by now most folks have seen the infectiously enjoyable Shazam.  This movie has turned into a real slam dunk for the haggard DC Entertainment and seems to mark a turning point where their movies go from polarizing dregs like Suicide Squad and Dawn of Justice to a new era of popular if disconnected hits like Aquaman and Shazam.  

In any event, WB seems to have faith in this as they’ve already re-upped the creative team behind Shazam to begin work on a sequel, which means I get to start speculating on who we might see in said sequel.  I’m not going to address the very obvious appearances in the sequel set-up by Shazam’s post-credits scene but there are still a number of characters from the Shazam mythos and beyond that, I think we can expect to see in whatever adventures are next in store for Shazam and his marvelous family.

 

Panel Vision - Shazam! Easter Eggs Explained

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So, Shazam is upon us and, for a change of pace, DC’s new blockbuster seems to be doing really well.  That’s not a huge shake-up to be fair as Aquaman and Wonder Woman both found a major audience and received overall positive reviews, it largely just feels like Shazam’s place as the third success under DC’s belt has finally marked the company exiting the shadows and making good movies for a change.  A big part of that change has been a shift in approach to the idea of continuity.  

Previously DC films were all about crafting a meticulous extended universe of inter-connected plot points and characters.  More recently that particular wrinkle has taken a serious backseat to things like good characters and fun action, which is absolutely for the best.  However, it’s not as if the DC films are completely devoid of Easter Eggs, shocking cameos, or post-credit scene teases and Shazam was no exception.  As such, I’ve put together this list of 5 shocking appearances in Shazam. 

Cover Story - Top 12 Shazam Comic Covers

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So, there’s a new superhero film at the box office and that means a new dive into the annals of comic book history.  This week has given us a look at the first ever feature film debut of Shazam! the world’s mightiest mortal and one time biggest thing on the planet.  Despite his years worth of lawsuits and problems with using his own name Shazam has done fairly well for himself in comics with a number of popular series and appearances to his name but I’ll be focusing specifically on the ‘90s comic The Power of Shazam, by Jerry Ordway.  

This was the last time Shazam enjoyed an actual ongoing title and it features some truly beautiful cover work from Ordway with these lovely painted covers.  It’s one of those really enjoyable ‘90s comics that’s earnest and fun and is constantly forgotten when bitter comic nerds try to rewrite the decade as nothing but grungy anti-heroes.  But enough bashing at the try-hard vanguard of faux tastemakers, let’s dig into this series and get the cover story on the top 12 Power of Shazam covers. 

Week in Review - The Stand (1994)

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And so we come to the end of my dive into the Stephen King films of the ‘90s.  Some were a delight, some were bizarre and dated, some were Apt Pupil, but I’ve elected to end this look back with another longtime favorite I had before even embarking on this endeavor: 1994’s The Stand.  Though not technically a movie, The Stand was part of the other wave of King adaptations at the time that arose from the world of TV.  It was a mini-series consisting of 4 episodes released over 5 days in May of 1994.  

It’s a mammoth of a mini-series and one of the four released at the time alongside the original IT, the comedically bad and often maligned Langoliers, and the mostly forgotten Tommyknockers.  As that description probably suggested The Stand is easily the best of the four and definitely deserves a spot as one of the better King adaptations of the ‘90s thanks to its well-composed focus and cast of solid TV mainstays turning in great performances.

Week of Review - Apt Pupil (1998)

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I want to be upfront here; I went into Apt Pupil with “they can’t all be winners” mentality.  I’m aware that digging through forgotten C-list cinema is by no means a sure thing and there’s every chance that among the genuine gems like Needful Things and The Mangler you’re going to come upon stuff that’s problematic or dated like Thinner.  However, I was in no way prepared for just how terrible Apt Pupil was going to be, this movie makes Thinner look like The Shining.  

It’s a film that I fully expected to be dated, tasteless, problematic, uncomfortable and more and while it was absolutely all of those things it was somehow so much less as well. 

It’s a bad movie I’m kind of shocked we ever stopped talking about yet also completely unsurprised it’s been swallowed up by the dust bin of history and banished by its own mediocrity.  I mean, when you’ve got a movie about a teen boy sociopath who forms an unsettling relationship with an old Nazi and it’s directed by Bryan Singer the last thing you expect it to be is so damn boring. 

Week of Review - Graveyard Shift (1990)

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So far in this Week of Review, all the King adaptations I’ve looked at have been fairly unique from one another, barring one crossover character.  That’s about to change with this film, Graveyard Shift.  Released in 1990, Graveyard Shift was adapted from a Stephen King short story of the same name, much like The Mangler.  Also much like The Mangler, Graveyard Shift revolves around a series of mysterious deaths in an industrial building that also happens to function as the lifeblood of a small Maine town and there’s an evil owner involved. 

You know, when you lay it all out like this it becomes A LOT clearer why Stephen King adaptations would more or less flame out hard in 1995 and not really recover till 2013.  Even accepting that The Mangler and Graveyard Shift are actually very different kinds of movies with unique approaches to horror the outward similarities are a little hard to overcome.  Of course the biggest difference, and this is a tough one to avoid, is that Graveyard Shift isn’t nearly as good as The Mangler.

Panel Vision - Art of the Prank

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It’s April Fool’s Day, which usually means a day of disbelieving anything you see on the Internet but I’ve elected to celebrate the holiday a different way.  Rather than a fake review I’m looking back at one of my favorite super villains of all time through the lens of one of his few starring roles: Oswald Loomis- The Prankster.  Created in 1942 by Jerry Siegel and John Sikela, Prankster is one of the few non-powered villains in Superman’s rogues gallery and a proud member of the joke-themed villain cadre alongside the likes of The Trickster and the Joker. 

He’s been through a number of iterations, starting off as a cartoonishly fat character who’d go after Superman using deadly practical jokes and gags.  He also got somewhat re-imagined for the New 52 era but neither of those are the Prankster I’ve chosen to focus on today.  No, instead I’ll be looking at the Prankster of Superman #660 from 2007, written by Kurt Busiek with art by Mike Manley and Bret Belvins, color by Lee Loughridge, and letters by Rob Leigh. 

Week of Review - Needful Things (1993)

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One of the odd things about Stephen King’s work is that he’s arguably one of the most successful literary authors to dip his toes in the realm of continuity.  If you’ve been living under a rock for the past decade, what I mean by continuity is the idea that characters, events, and elements of a world are consistent across multiple stories that aren’t necessary sequels to each other.  Marvel Studios has more or less made their bread and butter with continuity, trusting that story elements like SHIELD or the Infinity Stones can appear in Thor 2 or Incredible Hulk and audiences will know and accept these films as being in the same universe.  

This has long been the case in comic books but it’s rare in literary circles, mainly because connected books tend to just be sequels but that’s definitely not the case with King.  He’s concocted a vast web of interconnecting books that are in no way framed as sequels to each other, mainly through shared geography of fictional Maine towns.  Stories like IT, Tommyknockers, The Dead Zone, Stand By Me, Shawshank Redemption, Cujo all take place in the same fictional Maine county with its core being the town of Castle Rock, and in 1993 Castle Rock finally got its starring horror movie story in Needful Things.

Week of Review - The Dark Half (1993)

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Let’s talk for a minute about George Romero.  Romero is one of the all-time giants of the horror genre, a skilled and storied director most famed for introducing the world to the streamlined vision of zombies that was the “of the Dead” film series.  However, as excellent as that series is (the first four films and the Romero directed remake anyway) the man did a lot of other high-quality work that’s gone unfairly under-appreciated by the public at large such as Monkey Shines or Knight Riders.  

In 1993, Romero decided to dip his toes into the Stephen King pond and turned in one of the best King adaptations of the decade: The Dark Half.  Starring Timothy Hutton and Michael Rooker, The Dark Half is quintessential King viewing, hitting on a number of his favorite tropes and ideas while still realizing them in their best way.  The film also marks the first entry in this retrospective to tie into the Stephen King shared universe of stories, connecting as it does to the fictional town of Castle Rock, Maine.  So, continuity, quality, and a number of name actors and creators who’ve become beloved in their own right- let’s talk about The Dark Half.

Week of Review - The Mangler (1995)

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On to day two of my look back at the forgotten Stephen King adaptations of the ‘90s, today we’ll be taking a look at the Tobe Hooper film The Mangler.  This was one of the last King films of the Golden Age of adaptations, released in 1995 right before the well of adaptive works dried up almost overnight.  It’s actually somewhat staggering the level of King adaptations that cropped up between 1990 and 1995.  Including TV mini-series like IT and The Stand the first half of the ‘90s saw a staggering 12 King adaptations, the same as the entirety of the ‘80s and double the number that was made in the 2000s.  

That’s also part of why these mid-decade adaptations like The Mangler or Thinner started getting into the stranger corners of King’s canon, most of the more cinematic or standard pulp options like Christie, Misery, and The Shining had already been done so they were really scraping the bottom of the barrel with stuff about Romani weight loss curses or an evil industrial ironing machine from hell.  However, don’t let the goofier subject matter fool you because The Mangler is easily one of the best King adaptations this decade produced.