The Magic of Shazam!
It may very well be decades before I have the chance to write The Magic of Shazam! for DC, but the way I see it it is never too early to start planning the demise of Judd Winick's rape (though DC calls it a "reimagining") of the Marvel Family mythos. I really want The Magic of Shazam! to start with the story "Giant Atomic Robots;" so, I'll have to restore the Wizard Shazam to the Rock of Eternity, Billy Batson as Captain Marvel, and Freddy Freeman as Captain Marvel Junior (to be quickly rechristened Kid Marvel) before MoS! No. 1.

The idea is that Billy, Mary, Freddy, and Mr. Tawny will go on a quest modelled after The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. One problem: I've never read The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, nor any of L. Frank Baum's other Oz books, I've only seen the famous film The Wizard of Oz (and a few terrifying minutes of The Wiz). The solution is both simply and obvious and I am confident I will find the time to read The Wonderful Wizard of Oz sooner rather than later.

Mary will act as a proxy for Dorothy Gale, the smartest and most level-headed member fo the expedition. Billy will be the proxy for the Scarecrow; by no means is he brainless, but let's face it, there's no doubt that Mary has the lion's share of the brains amongst the Batson children. Billy was chosen to be Captain Marvel because of the purity of his heart, not his GPA; the Scarecrow has a good heart. Plus, Freddy will call the role of the Tin Woodman and then tease Billy about being without a brain. Again, it is an imprecise fit as Freddy is the exact opposite of heartless, but compared to the bleeding hearts of Billy and Mary he is relatively (and again I stress that relatively is the operative word) callous. And Mr. Tawny will stand-in for the Cowardly Lion since, well, he's an anthropomorphic tiger which is darned close to being an anthropomorphic lion.

So, Billy = the Scarecrow, Mary = Dorothy, Freddy = the Tin Woodman, and Mr. Tawny = the Cowardly Lion. The Wizard Shazam will stand-in not so much for the Wizard of Oz, but for Kansas. Who's going to be Oz? I don't know. The Phantom Stranger, maybe? Who's going to be the Wicked Witch of the West? Don't know. Hmmm, maybe an update of a classic Marvel Family foe like Oggar the Immortal* or the Aztec priestess Nyola, or maybe a sorceror/sorceress borrowed from another province of the DCU. Anyway, this story will have it all, munchkins, Emerald City, the Good Witch of the North, the yellow-brick road (called, interestingly enough, "the road of yellow bricks" in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, not "the yellow-brick road"), and, most importantly, flying monkeys.

The title of this magnificent miniseries? I don't know if I want to use Oz in the title, like Shazam!: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz or Shazam!: The Marvelous Land of Oz (slick way to work in "marvel" if I do say so myself); if I want to simply reference the Oz books, like Shazam!: The Yellow-Brick Road, Shazam!: The Emerald City, or Shazam!: Off to See the Wizard; or if I want to follow the "_____ of" theme of The Power of Shazam!, The Trials of Shazam! (*wretch*), and my own beloved The Magic of Shazam! with something like The Throne of Shazam! or The Search for Shazam!

Huh, I quite like The Throne of Shazam!, actually. (And it's apropos since my intention is to restore the Wizard, or at least his ghost, to his rightful throne in the Rock of Eternity.) But the Oz titles are mighty tempting, especially since all the Baum novels are public domain. Shazam! in the Marvelous Land of Oz? And once The Magic of Shazam! is up and running, we could always return to the Oz theme, perhaps with Timmy Tinkle (a.k.a. Robot Marvel) as the proxy for Tik-Tok and Billy's best gal Veronica standing in for, I don't know, Princess Ozma or somebody.

Ooo, perhaps this Oz thing would be a way to work in the Land of Faerie I intend to use in "Faerie Tale," "The Faerie Queene," and other, later stories in The Magic of Shazam! The Faerie Queene as Glinda, the Good Witch of the North? The Erlkonig as the Nome King? Sergeant Perriwinkle as... hmmm. I definitely need to read the Oz books sooner rather than later.

*World's Bestest
Captain Marvel - The World's Mightiest Mortal
Mary Marvel - The World's Mightiest Girl
Captain Marvel Jr. - The World's Mightiest Boy
Dr. Sivana - The World's Wickedest Scientist
Georgia Sivana - The World's Wickedest Girl
Sivana Jr. - The World's Wickedest Boy
Mr. Mind - The World's Wickedest Worm
Oggar - The World's Wickedest Immortal

Back in the Golden Age, the Marvel Family were of course the World's Mightiest Family and the Sivana's were the World's Wickedest Family. Dr. Sivana's two good children, Magnificus and Beautia are part of the modern-day DC Universe and I intend to use them in The Magic of Shazam! Thaddeus Bodog Sivana, Jr. and Georgia Sivana (Get it? Savannah, Georgia? Yeah, that's just terrible; thank Bog is isn't mine.) were created after Magnificus and Beautia and unlike their older siblings are nearly phisically identical to their father, Dr. Sivana. I've been tinkering with the idea of reintroducing Georgia and Junior as clones of Dr. Sivana, not so much as replacements for his beloved but estranged natural children, but as instruments to use against the Marvels, extensions of his own twisted genius.