The storytelling feels like classic Johns, different than Batman: Earth One or Batman: Three Jokers. That is, we've got a team, and we've got various locations and each of those locations have their own individual threats, and the team splits up for a while to handle those until it all starts to bleed back in to one another.

Perhaps it's the presence of artist Dale Eaglesham, but Shazam! and the Seven Magic Lands reminds me very much of Johns' JSA and Justice Society of America work, particularly his considerably long-form Thy Kingdom Come with Eaglesham. The two books deserve to be collected together, two epic bookend stories, in a Shazam! by Geoff Johns package who knows what's going on with DC right now, whether books like Shazam! simply serve as fodder for the movies and then fade away, but I'd be happy to see Johns pop up now and then with more graphic novel-esque stories of this Shazam! family, 12-issue and done 'seasons' without the promises unfulfilled of ongoing series. One gets the sense of Johns and Gary Frank's oft-reprinted Shazam! backup series from the New 52 Justice League as being something Johns gave a lot of effort, and too his Shazam! and the Seven Magic Lands is also enjoyable, if not wholly up to par with its predecessor. Certainly delays didn't help, nor even a fairly good movie. As with too many other Geoff Johns projects lately, it feels as though the vagaries of events elsewhere torpedoed Johns' Shazam! series almost before it started.

Shazam the seven magic lands