Superman Shazam The Return of Black Adam

I liked this more than I thought I would, but that's because it is more parts than whole. Despite the title, the whole Superman and Shazam kabanga is just a small part. This is really a series of four shorts. There's one of the Spectre, Jonah Hex, and Green Arrow.

The Spectre is in many ways the most interesting. He's not a typical hero. He's more hero by way of Freddy Kruger. He's a dead man who embodies the spirit of vengeance and basically he can do whatever he likes. That means if you cross the Spectre you die. But you will die an interesting death. For example, being cut to shreds by your own stolen money. Superman definitely would not approve.

Jonah Hex, as written by western writer Joe R. Lansdale plays things fairly straight. Our bounty hunter is after someone who has already been killed. But Jonah is nothing if not the type to see a job go unfinished. Definitely more "For A Fistful of dollars," and less "Wild, Wild West."

Green Arrow is just a guy who is good with arrows and wants to be today's Robin Hood. In this short he wants to ask long time girl friend Black Canary for her hand, but folks are gunning for his head. This short really profits from a loser censorial tone and we see that arrows are definitely not a good thing to have sticking out your anatomy.

The title bout is pretty good. Both Superman and Captain Marvel (shazam) have the same sort of niche (in fact DC once successfully sued the makers of Captain Marvel into submission), and they work well together. Black Adam sort of looks like Spock crossed with Captain Marvel and he was sort of the first Captain Marvel before going bad. He doesn't like the idea of a new kid in town so he's trying to take care of it. A lot of good super hero throw down here.

The thing that makes this collection REALLY worthwhile is the special features. There they took other episodes from DC cartoons that featured these characters and put them together as sort of a second collection of shorts so you are basically getting a two for one and who doesn't like that?