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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.
12.
We’re starting a little soft with this cover but it’s a good indication of things to come with this series. Power of Shazam was intended as a retro throwback of the time, something that could embrace the broad strokes and tone of a Silver Age comic rather than the more current events minded style of the late ‘80s. Covers like this really cement that particular approach in content if not necessarily in style. The visual of a suit-wearing gentleman fitted with some cement sneakers is about as retro an image of “crime” as you can think of that doesn’t feature black and white horizontal stripes.
Everything about the image screams of a vintage era like the ‘20s or ‘30s, which absolutely fits the classical hero boy scout vibe that Shazam often evokes, sometimes even more than Superman. There’s also just a stupendous command of color and detail here. The smattering of air bubbles across the page creates a great light blue accent to the deep blue of the pier and aquamarine of the surface while Shazam’s red and gold costume creates a natural binary to the black suit. Creating an image this big to take up a cover can be tricky but this is balanced perfectly.
11.
This is the only cover on the list that’s a bit of a cheat as it doesn’t come from the original Power of Shazam comic run. This was from a DC event in the late 2000s called Blackest Night, in which various dead characters returned to life as hideous space zombies animated by bizarre Black Lantern rings (it’s a Green Lantern thing.) In the case of this comic, our focus is one Osiris (as the caption should indicate.) Osiris was a character cooked up for the acclaimed 52 comic as the sidekick of sometimes anti-hero and sometimes villain Black Adam, one of Shazam’s archenemies. He was the younger brother of a woman Adam had fallen in love with and chose to give powers to both her and her brother.
Osiris died in that series but as you can see he’s back here and I absolutely love the visual imagery of it. The visual imagery of the creepy zombie versions of heroes was a big selling point of Blackest Night and it’s definitely on display here, complete with mummy wrappings sliding off of Osiris as he emerges from his tomb. I also love the minor details that the carvings on the sarcophagus depict the Black Adam Family and the flag of Khandaq, the fictional North African nation they reside in. It’s a very spooky kind of cover that’s evoking the same retro vibe as the previous one only filtered through the lens of B-movie drive-in monsters rather than gangsters and 1920s super heroics.
10.
Here’s another VERY horror-infused cover that feels like it’d be perfectly at home on the poster wall of a drive-in or low budget movie theater in the 1950s. The point of view being from the monster of the cover is a really nice trick for implying how terrifying the creature is without giving away the beast but I do like that we can see the thing’s vein gnarled hands lurching towards Mary Marvel. Incidentally, if you’re new to the Marvel family this is Mary Marvel, Shazam’s sister whom he shares a fraction of his powers with. She’s a long time favorite of the Shazam mythos and actually predates Supergirl by about 20 years.
Aside from the retro subject, the style of this cover is another great example of what a command of the cover format this series had. It’s another full cover image but it’ balance of cover is a little more muddled, however, what really shines is the use of lighting. The shades in the background provide soft backlighting that allows the lighting from below to add to that horror movie look I mentioned while the monster’s hands are afforded an eerie glow that may or may not be a light source. It’s a really great use of shadow and light to enhance this very cheesy image into something more than just an homage.
9.
So this is actually a pretty unique cover, for a number of reasons. Firstly, for the uninitiated, this particular hero is Captain Marvel Jr. He’s a young man named Freddy Freeman whose grandfather was killed by the villain Captain Nazi during a fight with Shazam. Shazam, feeling bad for the now orphaned boy, who had also been left disabled by the attack, decided to share some of his power with Freddy as he had done for Mary. And so now whenever Freddy says “Captain Marvel” he transforms into Captain Marvel Jr. (Shazam was known as Captain Marvel back in those days but isn’t any more for legal reasons.)
You can actually see Captain Nazi on this cover, he’s on the far left side fighting the guy in the red cape. Speaking of whom, the other heroes on this cover are Bullet Man, Spy Smasher, and Minute-Man, a trio of slightly more obscure heroes from the same original publisher as Shazam that were bought up by DC Comics but never given as much focus as Shazam and his Shazam family got. That’s part of what made this cover so unique, the way it integrates all these very obscure characters that DC seemed mostly uninterested with because they weren’t the world’s mightiest mortal.
Finally, the actual visual of Captain Marvel Jr. bursting out of the cover is a complete throwback to the classics of cover design. Most notably, this bears a striking resemblance to the cover that introduced Robin to the world, though the visual of the hero jumping out of the comic has been used for a number of beloved covers and hero debuts.
8.
Another spooky cover, this one most reminiscent of a lot of the creepier Disney stuff that tends to get kind of forgotten in their vast catalog of entries. What’s more, this is easily the best color balance in one of these covers since the first one, especially the way the crimson of Dr. Morpheus’ costume bleeds into the deep black of his night mare. Like cover #12 this is a good example of using the texture of the foreground to create a kind of neutral palette that the bright pops of color of our two subjects can pop against and form a visual binary.
In this case, it’s that eerie miasma of fog that gives the cover its unique look and also adds to the classically spooky look. It reminds me a lot of Disney’s Legend of Sleepy Hollow or possibly even Skeleton Dance, both of which feel decidedly intentional. This goes beyond the fog and central image of the creepy horseman, even the background elements like that branching gnarled dead tree behind Captain Marvel Jr. has the vibe of a creepy Disney visual, similar to the evil trees from Snow White. Also, minor detail but I really like that the night mare’s glowing red eye has an energy trail, that’s pretty cool.
7.
This is actually a very different kind of cover for this series, in that it’s the first time a major character has only been partially in frame (I’m not counting the monster from #10.) This is always a unique technique to see in comic covers as it’s nowhere near as era-specific as a lot of other cover approaches are but it’s a welcome sight whenever I come upon it. In this case, we have the really cool visual image of Billy Batson reaching out towards Shazam, the two somehow split by that weird rainbow lightning swirl, with Mary Marvel screaming even closer to the point of view.
It creates a very clear and easy line of sight for the viewer, which is nice because all that intermingling rainbow color could easily muddy this image without the direct line of hands to follow. It also adds a really nice sense of urgency to the situation that everyone on this cover is screaming. The whole thing actually has much more of a ‘70s Bronze Age vibe to it than the much older feeling other covers, which is a nice change of pace.
6.
These covers really love their textured foreground design, don’t they? Not that I’m complaining, this is an incredibly visually arresting image and a lot of that comes from the stunning amount of detail put into the background mass of Venusian worms. Oh yeah, if you didn’t know this character we’re seeing are the hordes of Mr. Mind, a brain worm from the planet Venus and one of Shazam’s archenemies. Mr. Mind is usually all on his own so it’s easy to forget he actually comes from an entire race of alien worms so seeing them all consume Shazam like this is an exceptionally striking moment playing on a thing the audience is aware of without realizing they’re aware of it.
I think this is also supposed to be in space or possibly on Venus itself and that’s what the breathing apparatus Shazam is wearing is but I can’t be sure, though it helps give him a greater presence on the cover regardless. This is another example of great color blending as the red of Shazam’s costume and the green of the worms easily could’ve given this a more Christmas-ish look but the darkness of the green and gold trim of the costume avoid this neatly.
5.
This is easily the most ‘90s cover I’m going to showcase from this ‘90s series, largely because of the way the extreme close-up is being deployed here. There’s very little action on the cover and it’s selling itself more through the implication and emotion of a single image. This is something that was actually somewhat common in the ‘90s, especially with how often cover artists of the time would end up doing close-ups of people’s faces. In this case, however, we have something more unique and interesting than just a face: a wanted poster board, again giving us that retro feel as I don’t think anyone has actually ever seen a wanted poster out in the real world.
It’s a good way to convey a kind of anachronistic quaintness to the series while still showcasing some of its worst villains; I mean Mr. Atom is wanted for Mass Murder and Mr. Mind for “Crimes Against Humanity.” I also really love the subtle symbolism of putting Shazam’s clenched angry fist right above the wanted poster for Sinclair Batson, his own relative turned evil. Shazam has always been a series with a heavy emphasis on family and seeing someone who should be a source of light and comfort turned so evil would definitely make even a pure hero like Billy Batson mad.
4.
I’m not sure there’s another cover on this list that so perfectly encapsulates the character of Mary Marvel like this one does. It’s actually a really unique cover design for this series, emphasizing a three-way color split rather than the usual binary over a softer background. There are elements of similar covers but they’re deployed in a unique way, emphasizing Mary as the focal point of the cover, her complete, unrestrained freedom as she takes flight into the clear and open sky. The look of the clouds behind her is really beautiful and almost Michelangelo-ESC.
A lot of that comes from the color balance, that blend of deep creams fading into goldenrod then an almost mauve where the clouds disappear into the deep blue of the sky. There’s just an inherent joy to the cover but also a power to it, it’s like an ideal distillation of the wish fulfillment that is the power of flight, which is itself fairly unique. Most of the time when people focus on the Shazam family or even the Superman there’s a tendency to focus on their strength of invulnerability and overlook just how much joy and light the power of flight contains within it.
3.
From an extremely joyous cover to one of true shock and horror that actually carries an extra special weight to it for the Shazam family. Obviously, this image is of an atomic explosion, which actually does fit the retro themes and tones of previous covers given how often this kind of imagery tended to be the hallmark of B-movies and drive-in cinema of the ‘50s. However, it’s made a lot more real here, thanks partly to the great color work. The whole cover being bathed in the fiery orange light of the explosion as it takes up the ENTIRE page, even making our heroes feel small, gives this image a sense of overwhelming finality and reality.
What’s more, it actually harkens back to an obscure Shazam comic wherein Shazam took on the threat of atomic war…and lost. Published in 1946, Captain Marvel Adventures #66 featured Shazam trying desperately to stop a massive atomic war, started for essentially no reason, and constantly falling short till all of humanity was consumed by the fires of atomic devastation and Shazam was left the last man alive on Earth. It’s a devastating and terrifying issue that I’m still amazed was ever produced and while I’m not sure if this cover was an intentional reference to it it’s a hard parallel to ignore.
2.
This is another Event comic tie-in like #11 but unlike Blackest Night I don’t think anyone really cares about or even remembers Genesis (largely because it wasn’t very good.) In any event, the presence of the Genesis tie-in tag is mostly unimportant to the actual content of the cover, which is very good. This is doing one of the most interesting things with the background / foreground / subject split, creating a textured neutral background but also layering those faces of the ancients over the neutral background of the burnt orange sky. That’s who those characters are, by the way, the ancient beings of myth and legend who grant Shazam his powers: Solomon, Hercules, Achilles, Zeus, Atlas, and Mercury.
Rendering them in strictly outline form over the very textured cloudy sky is a great way to get them in the background without overpowering the more neutral look, just like darkening Shazam’s costume helps the red pop against the also very reddish sky. What I really love though is that core image of Shazam raging at the sky with the caption “If Thy Gods Forsake Thee.” So much of Shazam is based around this weird relationship he has to these mythic beings of legend, it’s rarely interrogated what happens when the Gods turn their back on their champion.
1.
Let’s get this out of the way right at the get-go: Hoppy, the Marvel Bunny, is absolutely a real character that predates this cover. He was one of those super pets like Krypto or Ace the Bat-Hound that tended to pepper a lot of early superhero books when the hero would have a whole family of similarly themed characters. That’s part of what makes this cover so great, how incredibly charming yet completely surprising a throwback it is, bringing back a character like Hoppy the Marvel Bunny without even an ounce of irony to it and also recasting him in a very Bugs Bunny-ESC manner.
You also have the inclusion of speech balloons, which automatically makes any cover that much better, it’s one of those things that just absolutely works. But I think what I really love about this image is how completely it flies in the face of the myth of the grim and gritty and extreme ‘90s. The ‘90s is a complicated time in comics history that people have let be defined by a very thin slice of comics when there was so much weirder and wonderful that the era produced and covers like this, completely off the wall and comedic and unselfconscious, showcase that truth incredibly well.
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