Agreed, Phantom Strange knows his ####. If he says Shazam is dead, there is no "Surprise!!!" sadly.......

Phantom Stranger is not omniscient (although he's close). He's mistakenly thought both Swamp Thing and John Constantine have been dead on different occasions when this was not the case.

Sorry JacinB, but you're not right on this count. :-)

Even if he is dead for the moment, there's no way that Shazam will stay that way for long. Somone who can imprison the embodiments of the seven deadly sins isn't going to let a little thing like Death slow him down.

I said it before, but I'll say it again:

In pre-Crisis continuity, Shazam died. The same exact way. He came back as a ghost, but he was still dead. What's the difference between then and now? And when Shazam was a ghost, the Marvel family still had all their powers.

Okay, sure, Captain Marvel is currently Billy Batson. That's got nothing to do with the death of Shazam. Spectre turned Cap into Billy before killing Shazam.

Okay, sure, Billy can't remember the word. That doesn't mean he won't remember it later.

So, what's the big deal?