Yesterday evening I was passing by the IGN Theater when a fan commented on how excited he was to be seeing the new animated Shazam.  Okay, as a fan of the character he had my attention.  Turns out the cue had just emptied in for the DC Warner Home Video preview show.  I grabbed a seat (even though I had been headed for the Dark Horse panel).

Bruce Timm among others took the stage to discuss Superman/Shazam – The Return of Black Adam and the upcoming collection of new animated shorts.  The Shazam feature is set for a 24 minute short as part of the collection.  Also in the mix are shorts featuring the Spectre and Jonah Hex.

The Shazam story is essentially a chance for the team to tell Billy’s origin story.  They showed three previews during the event.  The first ran 1 minute and  37 seconds and featured a fight scene between Superman and Black Adam.  In the scene Supes was protecting Billy Batson who had yet to discover his powers.

In the second scene, Billy is talking with the Wizard (voiced by James Garner of all people) and hears the origin of Black Adam just before learning that he is the chosen hero that will become Shazam.

The third clip was a full out fight between Shazam and Black Adam just as Billy transforms for the first time.  He’s figuring things out and enjoying the rush of his new abilities.  It ends comedically with Billy flying and saying “and all I had to say was Shazam”.  Of course just as he utters the words lightning strikes him a second time and he falls from the sky as Billy.

The collection of shorts will be available November 9th.

Next up, Timm introduced All-Star Superman calling it the “…best movie we’ve made yet as a complete movie.  There’s something just special about this story.”  Timm went on to explain that they really tried to capture the comic, magical nature of the story and were very respecful of the source material.

After the intro we were treated to the first 5.5 minutes of the film.  I was interested, but admittedly not as excited as I was by the Shazam footage.  It’s good, but not jaw dropping with the single exception of the initial shot of Superman framed by the sun, an iconic image that came out of All-Star.

The film itself is due out at the end of February or beginning of March.  They have not yet nailed down the 2011 date for film 10 in their animated stable.

What does the future hold?  Well, Batman: Year One brought a cheer from the crowd.  As for choosing future topics, there isn’t really a set formula.  Basically they do a series of conference calls when trying to come up with a target feature. They look at what can be easily adapted and All-Star (which did not fit that mold) was actually discussed during the creation of the Doomsday film.  Early on, the target for these features was to by PG-13 and edgy but they have backed off a little on pushing the more adult content.  For All-Star it really wasn’t needed to push the content further.  Really their guiding rule is famous source material.

Fun panel.  Love the feel of watching  BIG video in the IGN theater.