I just my copy today and finished reading it a little while ago.
Wonderful, wonderful first issue!
There's more genuine heart in a few pages of this book than most superhero titles have had in what feels like a thousand years. With Smiths art and sense of movement it's almost like Shazam! The animated series. Likewise with the writing in the sense that like Dini and Timm there is some very smart, thought out, and informed decisions about what to keep classic, what to tweak, and what to take a totally new tact with. Best Shazam! I've seen since Power of Hope!
SAY THE MAGIC WORD!
After 5 years of waiting, Jeff Smith's SHAZAM! The Monster Society of Evil #1 is available today and boy was it worth the wait. Smith breaths new life into Big Red Cheese's mythos. All classic Marvel elements are made magic again. The story is what you would expect with modern updates. Pencil work is clean and cartoony with gorgeously rendered coloring. While only a setup issue, Monster Society is a welcomed change to current SHAZAM! comics.
Don't forget to crack the Monster Society Secret Code @
http://dccomics.com/comics/?cm=6829 Spoiler warning
*** One aspect I didn't prefer: At the beginning, Billy receives some harsh treatment from an adult. Although rectified later, I found this portion to be a little unsettling. I'm curious to read how board members feel about it.***
In regards to that. With a lesser and more classless and shock motivated writer I maybe would have had a bad reaction to that. Under Jeff's pen though there's nothing gratuitous about it and it is being used to simply establish that a kid trying to live by himself on the street is inherently dangerous, and more than a little it speaks to the ideas of bullying and abuse which also does happen. Some degree of leaving the reader with an unsettling feeling is intentional, but he's not trying to milk for cheap shock value nor is it done in a way that breaks the overall tone of the book or the fun of the concept. The stuff in the 80's reboot with Billy ending up with Sivanna is much more blatant and unsettling in that sense I think than anything you'll find here.
Or hell, any scene involving Harry Potter's crazed foster parents.
*SPOILER*
I really like that there can be a character dynamic and interaction between Billy and Marvel now. The Rock of Eternity rules!