Review: ‘Thor/SHAZAM!’ Infinite Comic Flirts With Godhood
by Tony Thornley
The Marvel and DC Universes are filled with gods, both from mythology and decades of storytelling. When a god and a mortal using their power team up though, we really get to see how wide-reaching it is, in Thor/SHAZAM! Infinite Comic.
Al Ewing, Jethro Morales, Erick Arciniega, and Joe Sabino cross over Marvel and DC’s mightiest heroes.
The magic is broken. Donald Blake is not able to summon Mjolnir or transform into his true form of the mighty Thor any longer. But when a magic train summons him to a place with no place or time, Blake is about to find himself teaming with the world’s mightiest mortal, and together with the Captain, face the terror that broke him.
One of yesterday’s two surprise crossover drops, Thor/SHAZAM! takes two magical lightning powered heroes, and shows why the team-up just makes sense. It goes beyond just the simple “lightning strong guys” idea. Captain Marvel is powered by the gods, so what would a team-up with one of them be like?
Now, outside of some of the strange mish-mash of the story- Thor is still in his Donald Blake era, Billy Batson’s alternate form is Captain Marvel but the Wizard is in his modern incarnation- Ewing nails it. The story is fun, it’s clever and it’s actually exciting. Both Thor and the Captain figuring out how to circumnavigate the magical blocks, and Mister Mind’s magical transformation are truly great.
Morales and Arciniega’s art is great. I don’t love the vertical scroll format, but they make it look good. It’s hard for a story to not feel drug out or cut butchered or placed in the format. Morales — formerly the artist on the long-running Avengers Academy — ensures that the scroll is consistent and readable, while maintaining a very traditional comic reading experience, while Arciniega’s colors make it spring to life. Sabino also comes in here and makes the read clear and easy to get through.
I don’t read many vertical scroll comics (really just Wayne Family Adventures and It’s Jeff), but this was so much fun. It played with both universes, told an exciting and cohesive story, and looked great doing it.
Thor/SHAZAM! Infinite Comic is available now for free on Marvel Unlimited.
Overview
This is exactly what this comic- both the format and the crossover- needed to be. I hope we get more like this soon.
