#cm3

Trials of Shazam #5

I just found out about this meme.

Bonus:

Sword, Shield, and Shepherd’s Crook

Each Absolute interpretation we’ve seen so far centers its premise on removing a key element of the character’s status quo: Batman doesn’t have his billionaire funds, Superman doesn’t have his childhood with the Kents, Wonder Woman doesn’t have Themyscira, Flash doesn’t have his mentor, Green Lantern doesn’t have the Corps, and I haven’t read Absolute Martian Manhunter. These are all fairly literal elements, but I’ve chosen to center my Absolute interpretation of Captain Marvel on a thematic element, by removing the independence/freedom that the pre-Flashpoint comics so often emphasize.

So, here’s the core premise: Darkseid’s legions have obliterated most of the universe’s godly pantheons, with those few remaining choosing either to hide or consolidate power however they can. The Greco-Roman pantheon is one of these few, and they aim to consolidate power. As part of this goal, rather than choosing a single champion through the Wizard, they’ve chosen three, newly born, to shape into their tools: Billy, Mary, and Freddy Batson (all siblings in this universe, with Mary being a year older and Billy & Freddy being paternal twins). The government’s Department of Extranormal Operations learns about this and, under the advisement of Veronica Cale, arranges for the deaths of C.C. and Marilyn Batson and funnels the three kids into foster care (a process smoothed out by a monetary investment in one Ebenezer Batson), whereupon the DEO easily disappears the three to a site that presents to the public as an institution for handling family members with dangerous unnatural abilities (AKA, where they keep metahumans they find with dangerous/useful abilities that they want to take off the board or convert to their use). This facility is our initial setting, with Billy & Freddy at age 14, and Mary at age 15.

Now, to address our tritagonists:

Each of our trio has a unique set of patrons granting them powers. In this universe, they can access these powers without transforming (they don’t know the Words of Power needed to trigger said transformation, even), albeit to a limited extent and at significant detriment to their bodies. The Wizard didn’t intend for the harm to their bodies to be a thing, but the trauma they’ve undergone has disrupted those mental limitations. Their eventual transformations give each of them a magically created body that fits their mental ideal of a hero and that can properly channel their powers to their full extent without injury. Since these three have had basically zero adult role models in their lives, their transformed bodies still look like teenagers. They can only stay transformed for so long before running out of steam, and their mortal bodies still undergo metabolic processes while transformed, unaffected by anything their empowered bodies do or consume. Additionally, the transformation makes them more vulnerable to their patrons’ influence.

Billy

S: Wisdom of Solon

H: Strength of Hercules

A: Stamina of Atlas

Z: Power of Zeus

A: Courage of Achilles

M: Speed of Mercury

Billy’s abilities are the same as in the main-universe comics, though not necessarily to the same degree. Solomon has been replaced by Solon, one of the Seven Sages of Greece. This change was made because every other patron between all three champions is part of the Greco-Roman pantheon. In the pre-Flashpoint comics, Solomon is one of Billy’s patrons because the Wizard met him in life and was given part of Solomon’s essence for the SHAZAM magic. This would not fit into the way the patrons are going to be handled in this interpretation.

The gods chose Billy to fulfill the role of their Shield, to guard their pantheon and interests from outside threats.

Billy’s costume retains its New Earth design for the most part, particularly the color scheme and cape. The lightning bolt insignia is a glowing white color, is smaller, and is now positioned over the left breast. Golden highlights extend from the arm wraps and waist to converge in a circle around the lightning bolt emblem.

Billy doesn’t know his legal name. He goes by Billy because he was given that name by some of the other residents at the DEO site. His legal name is Merrill Batson, from the name of his father in Earth-S continuity.

Freddy

B: Quickness of Boreas

Boreas, god of the North Wind, grants Freddy the powers of superspeed and flight.

I: Might of Indiges

Indiges, another name for the deified hero Aeneas, grants Freddy the power of super strength.

N: Wrath of Neptune

Neptune, god of the sea and Roman aspect of Poseidon, grants Freddy the power to control water and shake the earth.

Z: Mercy of Zephyrus

Zephyrus, god of the West Wind, grants Freddy a supernatural mercy, to balance the need for battle. He is here to balance out the rage and bloodlust of Freddy’s other patrons.

A: Healing of Asclepius

Asclepius, god of medicine, grants Freddy the power of supernatural regeneration. Rather than being invulnerable, Freddy can heal from most any injury.

M: Fury of Mars

Mars, god of war and Roman aspect of Ares, grants Freddy supernatural fighting prowess and berserker rage.

When Freddy speaks his Word to transform, a geyser of water erupts beneath and engulfs him.

The gods chose Freddy to be their Sword, their weapon for eliminating their enemies, securing points of interest, and quelling resistance.

Like his New Earth design, Freddy’s costume is primarily blue with gold arm wraps, boots, and waistband, and a red cape with gold trim. The cape’s high collar is instead a deep hood, and the cape itself has been shortened to midway down Freddy’s back. Instead of a lightning bolt insignia, the costume has a trident insignia, with the same positioning as Billy’s. Freddy’s costume also has the same golden highlights. Along the top and bottom of the suit’s waistband is silver trim in the shape of waves, also looking similar to a toothy maw from the right angle.

Like Billy, Freddy doesn’t know his legal name, which is Jacob Batson, named after his grandfather Jacob Freeman.

As Freddy grew, his left leg and lower spine didn’t develop properly, making walking painful and untenable, and standing more so, without a mobility aid. When the DEO researchers have him performing tests or sparring, he’s allowed to wear an advanced leg brace that mostly deals with the pain, but outside of those times, he’s limited to the use of a forearm crutch, and never a wheelchair.

Mary

S: Fortitude of Soteria

Soteria, goddess of safety and preservation from harm, grants Mary the power of supernatural durability.

H: Arcana of Hecate

Hecate, Titaness of magic, grants Mary an acute affinity for magic and the occult.

A: Cunning of Ariadne

Ariadne, deified princess who helped Theseus escape the Labyrinth, grants Mary with keen mind and wit.

B: Prowess of Bellona

Bellona, goddess of war, grants Mary vast knowledge of battle tactics and warfare.

E: Swiftness of Eos

Eos, goddess and personification of the dawn, grants Mary the powers of superspeed and flight.

J: Judgment of Juno

Juno, goddess of marriage and protectress of the community, grants Mary the intuition to make the right decision.

Mary’s patrons here are totally different from any set of patrons she’s had in official comics. On New Earth, she gets her powers from Selene, Hippolyta, Artemis, Zephyrus, Aurora, and Minerva. In DC’s Bombshells, she gets her powers from Jewish heroines. Neither set would fit cleanly into this universe, so I’ve cut from whole cloth instead.

When Mary speaks her Word to transform, she is engulfed by multicolored flames.

The gods chose Mary to be their Shepherd’s Crook, their tool to cultivate societies to worship them and keep them flourishing. Some of her patrons, notably Hecate, would see her weakened or turned against the gods, as part of a greater conspiracy.

Mary’s costume is primarily purple, for Hecate, with golden arm wraps, boots, and chevron-like waistband. The costume retains the skirt but adds leggings beneath it. Her cape is still white with gold trim, but it goes past her waist, same length as Billy’s, and it’s secured at two clasps between her shoulders and neck, as opposed to a single clasp at one shoulder. Her insignia is a torch, with the same positioning as Billy’s and Freddy’s. Her costume also has the same golden highlight lines.

Like Billy and Freddy, Mary doesn’t know her legal name, which is Jocelyn Batson, from the name of her mother in Earth-S continuity.

——————

You may be wondering, at this point, why the Wizard would allow the gods’ three champions to remain trapped in the DEO’s facility. The short answer is that he’s dead and overthrown.

Teth-Adam

Teth-Adam’s origin as the Wizard’s previous champion, who went rogue and was thusly banished to the far-flung reaches of the cosmos, remains essentially the same, with its significance changed by its new context. Teth-Adam returned to Earth after centuries of traveling through space. While he wished to immediately take his revenge on the Wizard, he was pulled from this course by the sight of Kahndaq being ruled by the Lazarus Corporation. He joined the effort to free his country, but he lost his powers when the Egyptian pantheon was destroyed. Undeterred, he continued to aid the resistance effort until he heard of the Wizard creating three champions to serve the Greco-Roman gods. Spurred by this injustice, he sought a way into the Rock of Eternity, eventually enlisting the aid of Thaddeus Sivana to do so. Upon succeeding at breaking into the Rock and double-crossing Sivana, Teth-Adam killed the Wizard and attempted to take his power for himself, though the Wizard succeeded at withholding the portion of his power that let him create and locate champions. Unable to find the new champions, Teth-Adam locked down and abandoned the Rock to return to Kahndaq.

As for why Teth-Adam’s mortal body didn’t die during the centuries he spent returning to Earth, his patrons directly enhanced his mortal body instead of swapping it out for a magical one, and his transformation didn’t run out of steam simply because he had a ton of experience and practice maintaining it.

Thaddeus Sivana

As previously stated, Sivana helped Teth-Adam break into the Rock of Eternity and was subsequently betrayed. Sivana’s motive was to get his hands on the mystical artifacts housed inside the Rock, and while he mostly failed because of Teth-Adam’s double-cross, he did get away with the Historama, able to look upon any past moment on any plane. Through creative integration of technology and Suspendium, Sivana has devised a way to use the Historama to predict the future. With the Historama’s aid, he’s become a wildly successful inventor, combining magic and technology and stealing inventions before they can even be conceived.

The Wizard

At the time when Billy, Mary, and Freddy were chosen, the Wizard was the only remaining member of the Council of Eternity. He was eventually killed by the combined efforts of Teth-Adam and Thaddeus Sivana. His soul was claimed by his daughter, Lady Blaze, and now resides in her underworld domain.

Tawky Tawny

Originally a mortal prince, Tawny was elevated to the status of minor deity by the Greek gods. For a defiant act on Olympus, however, he was cast back down to mortal soil, charged to wander the land in ill-fitting skin until his penance is complete. When the three champions were chosen, Tawny was tasked with watching over and guiding them until they came of age. He was unable to stop the DEO from taking them, though, and equally unable to track them down. Having failed at his duty and his clearest hope for ending his penance, Tawny has let his mind dull, spending his days in the Fawcett City Zoo. Tawny is a shapeshifter in this continuity, able to take on any form but his own; he’s found the body of a tiger to be the least uncomfortable, so that’s the form he usually takes.

Kit Freeman

Kit Freeman, cousin to Mary, Billy, and Freddy, died too young. But after the three chosen Champions disappeared, the gods still needed (wanted) a tool to more closely exert their will and defend their interests. Thanks to the present circumstances and a favor the Olympians owed Hades courtesy of the patron selection the first time around, Kit’s soul was plucked from the Fields of Asphodel and empowered solely by Hades to serve as the pantheon’s substitute Champion (though of course the ‘substitute’ part of the arrangement was not made known to Kit), mentored Achilles, retainer to the house of Hades. Now calling himself Kid Eternity, Kit follows the orders of the Greco-Roman gods, desiring their hard-earned approval and a continued purpose. He has powers very similar to those of his mainline comics counterpart. Given his substitute nature and the disdain the Olympians largely have for Hades, Kit is essentially tossed aside once the original three Champions have been found.

Ebenezer Batson

Ebenezer Batson was paid a hefty sum by the government to help facilitate the murders of C.C. and Marilyn Batson and the disappearances of the Batson children, and to keep quiet about it afterwards. Ebenezer used that money, along with what he inherited from his brother, to gain prestige in Fawcett and get involved in politics. He’s become somewhat close “friends” with Sivana.

The Sivana Family

Venus

Venus is an investigative journalist and reporter for Whiz News. She’s a prolific muckraker, especially when it comes to the activities of her ex-husband, Thaddeus. She has split custody of Beautia.

Georgia

Georgia takes heavily after her father, just as much of a mad scientist obsessed with magic.

Thaddeus Junior

Thaddeus Sr.’s only son, Junior works for the DEO, being employed as a researcher at the facility Billy, Mary, and Freddy grew up in. He’s somewhat estranged from his father, Venus, and Beautia, but he keeps in touch with Georgia.

Beautia

The youngest Sivana at age 16, Beautia is a social politics expert compared to the rest of her family. She has the mind for the science and figures they work with, but very little interest in making a career out of it; she’d rather follow in her mother’s footsteps, if anything. She’s loyal to the idea of family.

Dudley H. Dudley

Dudley is a zookeeper at Fawcett City Zoo, working primarily with the big cats. He’s just barely keeping his head above water with that job, but he spends most of the rest of his time doing community volunteer work, like trash pickup or helping out in soup kitchens.

Lady Blaze & Lord Satanus

When most of the pantheons were wiped out, their underworlds were left deserted. Ever the opportunists, Lady Blaze and Lord Satanus each snatched up territory for themselves, bordering each other. They’re often snapping at each other’s throats.

Blaze specifically has control of a majority swath of the Duat (the Egyptian underworld), and she neglects most of her territory besides its borders, her favorite places, and her seat of power. She’s also much more interested in the happenings of the mortal plane than her brother is.

Each sibling stays involved in the earthly plane through human guises. Blaze operates under the name Angelica Blaise, deputy mayor of Fawcett. Along with her other duties, her side project is pushing for media censorship policies that would force her brother to stop publicly mocking her in his human guise. She’s also gunning for the mayoral seat.

Lord Satanus, less interested in being in charge of a city’s tedium, operates in Fawcett as local shockjock Collin Thornton, using his locally popular podcast to criticize and sling verbal abuse at Fawcett’s public figures, especially Angelica Blaise.

Mister Mind

Rather than being a worm-like creature from Venus, Mister Mind in this continuity is a magical creature, a parasite that feeds on mental and mystical energy alike, eager to ensnare intelligent and powerful minds to feed on and use for its own benefit.

The DEO

The Department of Extranormal Operations, operating under Veronica Cale’s direction, dedicates part of its operations to tracking, acquiring, and shaping meta- and otherwise empowered humans into tools for the government to use as it sees fit. This portion of their activities is internally referred to as Project Nyx. Some acquisitions are handled via abduction, like with the Batson children and many of their adult “patients,” but many others are performed legally, as the DEO publicly offers to take superpowered people off the overburdened or unwanting hands of their family members, supposedly promising to return them once they’ve been taught how to control their abilities or had them removed entirely.

The minors and adults are kept in separate complexes on the same grounds, with no contact between the two groups. Minor-aged subjects that reach adulthood are either moved to the adult complex or sent back home, depending on if the DEO decides that they’re worth further effort or not. In the case of the latter, the DEO uses a secretive means of altering the subject’s memories to edit out any confidential information. The minor complex stringently keeps up the facade that the DEO presents to the public, while the adult complex is much more mask-off. While the minor complex would seem more palatable, it’s run like a mental institution and research lab. The DEO uses specially made power-inhibiting ankle bands to keep the subjects’ abilities under control.

James Barr, Jack Weston, & Alan Armstrong

James, Jack, and Alan are three homeless war veterans who were discharged before they ever saw live combat. They’ve taken it upon themselves to defend their homeless community wherever they can.

C.C. & Marilyn Batson

C.C. and Marilyn were a pair of archaeologists, gaining some renown for their work in Egypt aiding in the cataloguing and translocation of historical sites that were obstructing large-scale constructions. When they had Mary, they transitioned to remote work. The DEO had them killed, making it look like an accident, in order to eventually acquire Billy, Mary, and Freddy for their metahuman “rehabilitation” site.

The Bromfields

Nick and Nora Bromfield are a pair of socialites living in Fawcett City. They are politely friendly with Ebenezer and Sivana, though they quietly dislike them. They are kind people, but not enough to disrupt their status quo.

The Vasquez Family

Rosa and Victor Vasquez are community organizers, coordinating protests and promotions for social change. They have three foster children: Pedro Peña, Eugene Choi, and Darla Dudley. Pedro and Eugene attend Fawcett High School, while Darla attends Fawcett Middle School.

Lori Zechlin & Charlotte Gage-Radcliffe

(For those unaware, these are Black Alice and Misfit.) Lori and Charlotte are stepsisters who both attend Fawcett High School. Charlotte is sunny and popular, while Lori has intentionally defined herself as Charlotte’s opposite. Both are Homo Magi, something they keep secret, with highly specialized magic. Charlotte can manipulate her own position in space with very few limitations, while Lori can temporarily steal super-abilities from the people around herself. Lori and Billy get along strangely well, which unnerves everybody else.

Courtney Whitmore

This looks like a job for

Lobo is on a tear because he’s all about sex, drugs, alcohol, and rock and roll.

And right now he’s legally only allowed to rock and roll