Meditations on Mary: Marvels Updated

Doc Shaner's recent series The Champion of Shazam is a good comic which both benefits and suffers from legacy and the constraints of continuity. Mary posseses the power of Shazam, since Billy is off wizarding at the Rock of Eternity. She is ready to go to college, to start a life independent of her foster family, and obligations of heroism. Mary is a character who has retained a fan base despite her underutilization as an independent character.  Mary, however, cannot escape Billy's sphere of influence any more (and probably less) than Kara can escape Clark's. Billy, unlike the cousins from Krypton, has a challenge maintaining his own series, while Superman endures. The other (former) female Shazam, Mary's younger foster sister Darla, provides more diversity but she is too young in-world and too recently created to claim the title of Shazam on her own. She may be better suited for a YA book, perhaps one set in the world of the Vietnamese Green Lantern or a crossover with a Wonder Person. Uncle Marv, on the other hand, is an unadulterated positive addition, who does not require powers (a betrayal of his basic nature), but also provides an adult mentor for a putative Mary-centric comic just as Darla does a Jimmy Olsen type - hopefully not a Vanessa Kapatellis! The choice of Georgia Sivana as villain is appreciated, since Sivana is the rare villain that has extended family born of legitimate marriages; Georgia, moreover, is the only Sivana sibling who possesses neither a "Junior", something which Freddie's absence suggests a move away from, nor a given name which would only hold up to scrutiny in the Golden Age of Comics. Georgia's motivation for villainy are sold and tied into the continuity of Shazam. This entanglement of Mary and Georgia with their male counterparts still leaves them with a burden of legacy, although a thankfully thin one which could be overcome in an ongoing series. This, however, is a limited series with an open ending of "the adventure continues" type. Reading the miniseries along makes this ending inspirational, but its placement with universal continuity diminishes the impact, especially when it is mandatory that the mantle of Shazam return to the slightly more commercial Billy. Even the title of the series is ambiguous: does the Champion of Shazam refer to Billy, the Champion of the force of good which the wizard Mamaragan encapsulated within the Magic Word, or Billy's Champion? 

Unrestrained by the continuity outside of Shazam portion of the DCU, this would make a hell of an animated movie; within it, like so many other series, the gravity of the status quo warps it into insignificance. This is a shame for the girl hero who preceded and inspired the Girl of Steel.