Grant Morrison has written some of the greatest superhero stories of all time, but the writer recently revealed they consider one Shazam story to be among their absolute best. According to the superstar writer, The Multiversity - Thunderworld Adventures #1 is one of the best single issues they’ve ever done.
Released in 2014, The Multiversity was an epic event masterminded by Grant Morrison. The event was made up of a series of one-shots, each taking place in a different universe in DC’s larger multiverse. The Multiversity - Thunderworld Adventures #1 by Grant Morrison, Cameron Stewart, Nathan Fairbairn and Steve Wands, takes place on Earth-5, the home of the classic Shazam heroes and their assorted villains. Notably, on Earth-5, Shazam and his allies go by their original names of Captain Marvel, Captain Marvel, Jr. and Mary Marvel. The Multiversity - Thunderworld Adventures sees them taking on the mad scientist Dr. Sivana and his spoiled group of bratty children Magnificus, Georgia and Thaddeus, Jr. The story is very much an homage to the Golden Age Captain Marvel, a character who was so popular at the time, he frequently outsold Superman.
Grant Morrison Considers This Shazam Story One of Their Best
According to Grant Morrison, this return to the classic Golden Age stories was very much intentional. Recently providing annotations for the issue via their newsletter Xanaduum, Morrison writes, “The brief was an easy one; I read through a ton of Golden Age Captain Marvel adventures with the intention of doing something that distilled the imagination, invention and wit of those stories but came with some contemporary trappings and humor.” Morrison then expresses how a return to the innocent whimsy of the Golden Age stories could still work in the present day, without having to modernize the characters or setting: “My intention was to show how a modern Marvel Family book could work without too much tweaking while still retaining much of the whimsy and charm of the originals. Updating without modernising!”
In achieving this in the story, Morrison looks to original co-creator C.C. Beck, returning to the Golden Age artist’s original intent to draw from classical mythology as opposed to pulp fiction when creating a new superhero. The result is one of the absolute best Shazam/Captain Marvel stories published by DC - a definitive take on the character akin to Morrison’s earlier work with Frank Quitely, All-Star Superman. Morrison certainly has a high opinion of the work, citing Thunderworld Adventures as one of their absolute best:
“I was pleased with how this one turned out at the time and of the range of one-shot superhero stories I’ve done, this is an all-time favourite. It had a clean narrative simplicity but structurally it was up there with (Multiversity one-shot Pax Americana) in a less demonstrative and more relaxed way.”
Morrison also cites All-Star Superman when discussing the issue, comparing the two favorably within his own body of work: “As a kind of All-Star Captain Marvel, it’s one of the most perfectly constructed single issues and summations of a brand that I’ve done.” By going back to the source and presenting the character as classically as they could, Grant Morrison wound up writing one of the best Shazam stories of all time.
Source: Xanaduum
