DC Comics just hit the reset button on Shazam, courtesy of Wonder Woman’s mom

I love the DC Comics superhero, a little boy shouting “Shazam!” and transforms into an adult-sized superhero in a red suit. Really, he’s a great classic character who’s had some really sensible tweaks to transform him into a really cleverly modernized all-ages family superhero story.

I hate that he has no name.

We used to call him Captain Marvel, and I accept that’s not an option anymore (even though he had it before). But it’s just not feasible for us to call him Shazam. First, he can’t have a name that forces him to transform every time he says it out loud. For another, Shazam is already the name of the wizard who gave him his powers. But the most frustrating thing for me, a person who writes about comics – if his name is Shazam, what do I call his sister?

She used to be Mary Marvel, but it isn’t anymore for obvious reasons. If I call her Mary Bromfield, no one will know who I’m talking about. Should I call her Billy Batson’s sister Mary? Disgusting!

And so every time DC Comics writers prepare for a new look at Billy Batson, his family and Shazam – as they did in the Lazarus planet #4 — I wait with bated breath. Will they put an end to my torment? Will they finally rename Billy Batson’s superhero identity? Only time, and DC is new Shazam! series will tell.

But in the meantime, I really like the way they reintroduced Billy and Mary’s powers Lazarus planet.

What else is happening in the pages of our favorite comics? We’ll tell you. Welcome to Monday Funnies, Polygon’s weekly list of the books our comics editor liked last week. It’s part society pages about superhero lives, part reading advice, part “check out this cool art.” There may be some spoilers. There may not be enough context. But there will be great comics. (And if you missed the latest edition, read this.)

Summarizing Time: Some time ago, Billy lost his ability to share his powers with his family. Then the wizard teamed up with some greek gods to take over humanity and took away Billy’s powers to do it. Also, in somewhat unrelated events, Wonder Woman’s mother, Queen Hippolyta, died and ascended to godhood as the Goddess of the Amazons.

With the closing of the Lazarus planet event, where magic and divinity became confused all over the earth, the wizard regains his trust in Billy and Hippolyta takes an equal affection for Mary. Billy still can’t share his powers with her, but he doesn’t have to. Mary has her own six goddesses – including Hippolyta – in her corner. It’s a return to Mary Marvel’s original origins, and a great use of Hippolyta, a character who otherwise doesn’t get much attention outside of Wonder Woman stories.

Deadpool has fallen in love with a non-binary mutant scientist with syringes for fingers, and they go on fun dates all day while Deadpool’s new pet – a progeny of the Carnage symbiote that was incubated in his stomach – eats all the assassins trying to kill she. I shed a tear with pride as I say, this is the future liberals want.

I admit I was skeptical of a new Doom Patrol series that brought the group closer to uniforms and superheroes, but writer Dennis Culver and artist Chris Burnham impressed me with their first issue, especially with their attention to including previous incarnations of the team. And OK, OK, maybe I’m just a sucker for Gerard Way’s run, but it’s just nice to see Lotion the anthropomorphic cat in a biker jacket.

Speaking of the future the liberals want: the mutated chimera that looks like Colossus (Kate Pryde’s ex-fiancée) and Illyana Rasputin (Kate Pryde’s old queer-coded “best friend”) combined, like many other characters from averted future timelines, have moved into current X-Men continuity. And the first thing that happens is a finally canonically bisexual Kate Pryde walks up to her to say, “How YOU doing?”