Shazam

Whoa, it’s magic.

There are few cartoonists more admired than Jeff Smith. Inspired himself by the serialized newspaper strips he read as a child, Smith went on to create a string of acclaimed, inspirational comics works that have not only proved evergreen in terms of story, but have brought in generation after generation of new excited cartoonists to make their own comics. Five Stars spoke to Smith about his career in comics through five milestone works, tracing a career through self-publishing, work-for-hire, and webcomics, and exploring the inspirations that inform his work.

There are big plans afoot in the DC Cinematic Universe, not the least of which is the upcoming Shazam movie (well — movies), which has a villain cast already (Dwayne Johnson, natch), but not the hero yet. It looks like DC is gearing up to move forward with it, because Warner Bros. is currently negotiating with David F. Sandberg, director of last year’s Lights Out, to helm the first film.

If you smell what The Rock’s been cookin’ (i.e. if you follow him) on social media, then you know that the charismatic and insanely busy actor recently had a very good meeting over at DC about the long-awaited Shazam movie. (No, not like that make-believe ’90s movie.) Apparently, that meeting went so well that the studio has reportedly split the film into two projects — or, more likely, they realized the error in thinking they could just cast Dwayne Johnson as a super-villain in someone else’s movie.

Because you demanded it, Young Justice is returning for a third season in 2017, and that means that there's no better time to get caught up on the first two seasons. This week, we get one of the best high concepts on the series so far, and a pretty interesting spin on a classic comic book story.

We asked you to vote for the best comics, creators, and more in 2016, and over the last few weeks we’ve been sharing the results. Now you can check out all the winners in one place!

This week, Young Justice gets weird as we get stories about the Brotherhood of Evil, Mr. Tawky Tawny, and maybe the weirdest lineup for the Injustice League ever.

For gentiles far and wide, yesterday was a day of rest and relaxation; Henry Cavill spent it making headlines. Today brings a twofer of Super-news in the post-Christmas lull:

Check out the characters most deserving of a solo series in 2017, including our critics' picks and the characters you voted the runner up and winner in this category!

What may go down as one of the worst years in recent memory is slowly crawling to a close, and while we wish it good riddance and hope against hope that 2017 will be an improvement, there is some small solace in looking back over the year that's passed and figuring out what stuff from it was the best. That's right, it's "Best of..." list time, and today we're taking a look at the Best DC Covers of 2016.