Future State: Shazam! #2 Review

Underworld Unleashed....... Again

Written By: Tim Sheridan

Art By: Eduardo Pansica, Julio Ferreira, Marcelo Maiolo, Rob Leigh

Cover Price: $3.99

Release Date: February 16, 2021

The future continues to look bleak in the year 2029 as Captain Marvel (Shazam) has separated from Billy Baton and has let the power go to his head to the point where he's not just fighting super villains and superheroes, he's killing them. Let's jump into this issue and see if we can understand the long game that Neron is playing when he granted Shazam's wish to separate from Billy and what evil our Mightiest Mortal is going to unleash on the world because of it. Let's check it out.

For this story, our Justice League team know that Shazam's been up to no good and have locked him away and even with him escaping in this issue so that he can continue to stop what he perceives as evil...... which is pretty much everything, this issue is more about catching the readers up to why this is all going down and to do that... Well, we're going to repeat a bunch of stuff that we saw in the previous issue, while not explaining why the Rock of Eternity is strictly hell in this future. In the previous issue, I assumed that the Rock looked like this because of locking away the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse but that doesn't seem to be the case and we're just left wanting for an explanation about this while wanting more from the explanation that's given.

For this story to work, Tim Sheridan has to take some liberties with how the power of Shazam works and pretty much says that our hero can't use the wisdom of Solomon without Billy being his host because of how pure he is and because of this our hero just sees what Neron wants him to see and it's a bit forced to get to this point to explain why our hero would then use the remnants of the Spear of Destiny to kill everyone that he deems possessed by evil. Yeah, eventually Neron needs this aspect for Shazam to kill the Spectre so that he can return to Earth without the worry of the Wrath of God coming down on him, but there's no real reason for Shazam to actually do this. So by the end, we don't have a full explanation that feels right for all of this to be going on and we're given a non-ending that twists what happened in Future State Teen Titans and will only continue in the 853rd Century in the Black Adam backup to the Future State: Suicide Squad book. Yeah, that's pretty disappointing.

All in all, I can look past the dark and bleak future that our heroes find themselves in but what I do need is some explanations about what's going on, why this is going on, and why our heroes would act in a certain way and while this issue tries to at least give you the latter, it feels like it takes some liberties to get there and just forces our hero in that direction because that's what the story requires. Ultimately though there's nothing all that satisfying about what you learn here or how it ends and really just uses the dark and bleak aspect of the story as something to make you feel like you were given something complete. Sadly, the story just lacks all around. Thankfully, the art is amazing all the way through so while I might no like the story we're getting, I can at least enjoy how looks along the way.  

Bits and Pieces:

The Rock of Eternity is hell and while I thought we would get further information about this or how Shazam! led from the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse story from Future State: Teen Titans into the dark nature he presents here, it seems to have little connection and everything we got out of this story is somehow separate. Ultimately, there isn't enough information given to understand the time we were thrown into and this leads to a lackluster story that just tries to use the idea of a bad Captain Marvel to wow you, but I don't think that concept would enthrall any fan. Thankfully though, the art was great throughout.

6/10