I apologize for the delay in these reviews, real life has been a distraction(no excuse I know). But we will catch up this week! You will get one issue review per day until Friday. That being said, issue 19 is another talk heavy installment, but it focuses on Billy Batson, a character not usually given the spot light. Let’s see where Billy takes us in the issue 19.
Injustice continues its trend of trying to combine reality with our favorite heroes. In issue 19 Billy decides to do an informal survey of people’s thoughts on the recent actions of DC’s heroes. As a child playing a hero, Billy presents an interesting case. He may be young, but he is very curious, and this new direction that his team is taking has him questioning his own actions. Billy gets the whole gamut of answers. Most people support the heroes, but some are worried of where their power will lead them, and many are so scared they don’t want to answer. All of these are real answers, and a good display of what I think people would answer.
There is some action as the league takes on Black Adam, but even here it isn’t just black and white. Black Adam defends the country of Kahndaq, so when a shell is fired into his homeland, he takes it upon himself to get retribution. The league shows that they are through being merciful, and take their own view of justice as absolute. It is a bit of a hard read as you can’t help but feel for Black Adam, since I’m sure many would take action to protect what they care about. Billy doesn’t seem to get the answer to his question, but he realizes his actions as Shazam(I hate calling him that, but that is what he is called in this series)are affecting him as a kid, and maybe that is answer enough. This issue makes it clear that there are no lengths to which Superman and his allies will go for “justice”, but it really makes you question whether they were ever right in the first place.