By various (DC Comics)
ISBN13: 978-1-4012-1089-2
One of the most venerated and loved characters in American comics was created by Bill Parker and Charles Clarence Beck as part of the wave of opportunistic creativity that followed the successful launch of Superman in 1938. Although there were many similarities in the early years, the Fawcett character moved solidly into the area of light entertainment and even comedy, whilst as the 1940s progressed the Man of Steel increasingly left whimsy behind in favour of action and drama.
Homeless orphan and good kid Billy Batson is selected by an ancient wizard to be given the powers of six gods and heroes to battle injustice. He transforms from scrawny boy to brawny (adult) hero Captain Marvel by speaking aloud the wizard’s name – itself an acronym for the six patrons Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles and Mercury
At the height of his popularity Captain Marvel outsold Superman and was even published twice a month, but as tastes and the decade changed sales slowed and an infamous court case begun by National Comics citing copyright infringement was settled. The Big Red Cheese disappeared – as did many superheroes – becoming a fond memory for older fans.
In Britain, where an English reprint line had run for many years creator/publisher Mick Anglo had an avid audience and no product, and so swiftly transformed Captain Marvel into the atomic age hero Marvelman, continuing to thrill readers into the early 1960s.
As America lived through another superhero boom-and-bust, the 1970s dawned with a shrinking industry and a wide variety of comics genres servicing a base that was increasingly founded on collector/fans and not casual or impulse buys. National, now DC Comics, needed sales and were prepared to look for them in unusual places. After the settlement with Fawcett in 1953 they had secured the rights to Captain Marvel and Family, and even though the name itself had been taken up by Marvel Comics (via a circuitous and quirky robotic character published by Carl Burgos and M.F. Publications in 1967) decided to tap into that discriminating fanbase.
In 1973 riding a wave of nostalgia DC brought back the entire beloved cast of the Captain Marvel crew in their own kinder, weirder universe. To circumvent the intellectual property clash, they entitled the new comic book Shazam! (‘With One Magic Word…’) the trigger phrase used by the Marvels to transform to and from mortal form and a word that had already entered the American language due to the success of the franchise the first time around.
Recruiting the top talent available the company tapped editor Julie Schwartz – who had a few successes with hero revivals – to steer the project. He teamed top scripter Denny O’Neil with the original artist C.C. Beck for the initial story. ‘In the Beginning’ in grand old self-referential style retold the classic origin whilst ‘The World’s Wickedest Plan’ related how the entire cast had been trapped in a “Suspendium†trap for twenty years after their arch-foes the Sivana family attacked them at a public awards ceremony. Two decades later, they were all freed, baddies included, to restart their lives. That first issue also included a text-feature/score-card by devotee E. Nelson Bridwell to bring new and old readers up to speed.
With issue #2 a format of two stories per issue was instigated. ‘The Astonishing Arch Enemy’ saw the return of the super-intelligent worm Mr. Mind and a running gag about how strange people in the 1970s were. The second tale was written by Elliot Maggin and introduced irresistible Sunny Sparkle ‘The Nicest Guy in the World’. O’Neil wrote ‘A Switch in Time’ wherein magic disrupted the boy-to-super-adult gimmick for young Billy in #3 and a wry spy tale ‘The Wizard of Phonograph Hill’ by Maggin and Beck filled out that issue. Evil Captain Marvel analogue ‘Ibac the Cursed’ returned in #4 courtesy of O’Neil, and Maggin again went for a human interest yarn with ‘The Mirrors that Predicted the Future’.
In the ’70s economics dictated costs in comics be cut whenever possible so there was really no choice about filling pages with reprints, which had been an addition from the start. A huge benefit however is that almost all of those stories were unknown to the general readership and of a very high standard. Although not included in this volume I mention them simply because they kept the page-count of most issues to around fifteen pages of new material per month (Shazam! was actually published eight times a year so the savings were even greater). Hopefully DC will get around to reprinting the Fawcett stories too – perhaps in the same format as the excellent Batman and Superman Chronicles trade paperbacks.
Maggin took the lead slot with #5’s ‘The Man who Wasn’t’ and provide the back-up which saw the return of Sunny Sparkle and his obnoxious cousin Rowdy who briefly was ‘The World’s Toughest Guy!’ O’Neil returned in the next issue as did Dr, Sivana in ‘Better Late than Never!’ and Maggin reintroduced the 1940’s boy-genius in the charming ‘Dexter Knox and his Electric Grandmother’. The loquacious Tawky Tawny took centre-stage in O’Neil’s ‘The Troubles of the Talking Tiger’ and uber-fan and wonderful guy E. Nelson Bridwell finally got to write a tale with the delightfully zany and clever ‘What’s in a Name? Doomsday!
Issue #8 was the first of many 100 Page Spectaculars stuffed with great old reprints, but as such it’s only represented here by the C.C. Beck cover, whilst the normal-sized #9 provides us with O’Neil’s ‘Worms of the World Unite’ and the first solo adventure of Captain Marvel Jr. in over twenty years. ‘The Mystery of the Missing Newsstand!’ is a fine tribute to the works of early Fawcett mainstay and Flash Gordon maestro Mac Raboy, written by Maggin and drawn by a young and brilliant Dave Cockrum. It is truly lovely to look upon. A third new story completed the issue. Maggin and Beck had heaps of fun on ‘The Day Captain Marvel Went Ape!’ as a mystic jewel deflected Shazam’s magic lightning into a monkey.
Beck, notoriously opinionated, had been unhappy with the stories he was being asked to draw and left the series with #10. He was a supremely understated draughtsman with a canny eye for caricature and gag-timing, and his departure took away an indefinable charm. Many other fine artists would continue the strip but a certain kind of magic left the strip with him. He wasn’t even the lead artist on that issue.
Bob Oksner and Vince Colletta illustrated Maggin’s mediocre ‘Invasion of the Salad Men’, but Mary Marvel’s solo debut ‘The Thanksgiving Thieves’ was a much better effort with Bridwell’s script handled by Oksner alone (if ever an artist should ink himself it was this superb stylist). Beck bowed out with Bridwell’s ‘The Prize Catch of the Year’ which returned the formidable octogenarian villainess Aunt Minerva – one of the most innovative baddies of the Golden Age.
Issue #11 kicked off with ‘The World’s Mightiest Dessert!’ by Bridwell, Oksner and Colletta, but the real gem of this comic was ‘The Incredible Cape-Man’ written by Maggin and featuring the long-awaited return of Kurt Schaffenberger, a brilliant and highly accomplished artist who by his own admission considered drawing Captain Marvel the best of all possible jobs.
He began his career at Fawcett before moving to DC when the company folded, and his resumption of the art-chores was inevitable. In this tale of a mail man who becomes a Mystery Man the art positively glows with joyous enthusiasm. This end of year issue concluded with a good old-fashioned Yule yarn featuring the entire extended cast in Maggin and Schaffenberger’s ‘The Year Without a Christmas!’
The twelfth issue was another 100 Page Spectacular but with three all new tales, ‘The Golden Plague’ by Bridwell and Oksner, another glorious Captain Marvel, Jr. adventure ‘The Longest Block in the World!’ by Maggin and Dick Giordano, and the cheerfully daft Kung Fu spoof ‘Mighty Master of the Martial Arts!’ by Maggin, Oksner and Colletta. The next six issues retained this same format, combining around twenty pages of new material with a superb selection of Fawcett reprints, but as the character spawned a children’s TV show, the comic was again slimmed down to a cheaper standard format.
‘The Case of the Charming Crook!’ by Maggin and Oksner led in #13 wherein a felon managed to synthesise “essence of Sunny Sparkle†and the artist was on familiar ground as an illustrator of beautiful women when he drew Bridwell’s Mary Marvel solo strip ‘The Haunted Clubhouse!’ The entire Marvel Family was needed in the next issue when O’Neil and Schaffenberger produced ‘The Evil Return of the Monster Society’ a splendid action thriller that served to remind us that Shazam wasn’t just about charm and comedy.
You know what fans are like: they had been arguing for decades – and still do – over who was best (for which read “who would win if they fought?â€) out of Superman or Captain Marvel so it’s amazing that a meeting took as long as it did to materialise. However the lead strip in #15 wasn’t it. Instead fans had to be content with a guest villain when Mr. Mind and ‘Captain Marvel Meets… Lex Luthor!?!’ by O’Neil, Oksner and veteran inker (Phillip) Tex Blaisdell, who had worked un-credited on many DC strips over the decades, as well as drawing Little Orphan Annie, On Stage and many others. Bridwell and Schaffenberger contributed an excellent crime–caper in ‘The Man in the Paper Armor!’ to round out the issue.
Schaffenberger kicked off the next issue with Maggin’s ‘The Man Who Stole Justice’; a taut thriller involving the incarnation of the one of the iconic Seven Deadly Enemies of Man (Sins to you and me) and a key part of the legend since the strip’s inception. Bridwell and Oksner utilised another Deadly Enemy in the Mary Marvel solo story ‘The Green-Eyed Monster!’ but aliens and a Hippie musician were the antagonists in the feature-length tale that lead off #17, the last 100 page issue. ‘The Pied Un-Piper’ was a tongue-in-cheek thriller from O’Neil and Schaffenberger but a slightly older tone started to creep into the whimsy with #18’s ‘The Celebrated Talking Frog of Blackstone Forest!’ (Maggin and Oksner) and Bridwell and Schaffenberger’s CM Jr. thriller ‘The Coin-Operated Caper’, but still not enough to deaden the charm.
Issue #19 introduced extra-dimensional delinquent Zazzo, the culprit revealed when Maggin and Schaffenberger asked ‘Who Stole Billy Batson’s Thunder?’. Mary Marvel was the back-up feature in the first slim-line comic, solving Bridwell and Oksner’s ‘Secret of the Smiling Swordsman!’, but the next issue teamed the entire Marvel Family in the full-length Sci Fi thriller ‘The Strange and Terrible Disappearance of Maxwell Zodiac!’, courtesy of Maggin and Schaffenberger.
Shazam! #21, 22,23 and 24 were all reprint, represented here by covers from Ernie Chua/Bob Oksner, two from Kurt Schaffenberger and then another from Chua & Oksner, reflecting a scheduling change that saw the comic come out quarterly.
I suspect, but have no proof, that this coincided with the TV show being off-air, as when issue #24 appeared in Spring 1976, new editor Joe Orlando oversaw a massaging of the scenario which would see young Billy and Uncle Dudley (a mainstay of the TV incarnation) set off around America in a minivan as roving reporters, encountering threats and felons in America’s Bicentennial year. Bridwell and Schaffenberger became the permanent creative team, with occasional inkers such as Vince Colletta, Bob Wiacek and Bob Smith pitching in, but seldom to the enhancement of Schaffenberger’s pencils.
To further confuse things issue #25 isn’t included even as a cover since it depicted a team-up of the Captain with Mighty Isis, a TV character that DC was then licensing for a tie-in comicbook. As that cover and story are absent I’m assuming that some Intellectual Property problem couldn’t be solved. That issue’s back-up ‘The Bicentennial Villain’ which introduces the new roving format does appear though. It was followed by the far less contentious and highly enjoyable ‘The Case of the Kidnapped Congress’ as Billy and Dudley combat Sivana in Washington DC. Colletta inked the self-explanatory ‘Fear in Philadelphia’, and the less than perfect art doesn’t detract from a right royal romp as Sivana uses a resurrection machine to bring back the greatest rogues in America’s history (that was a much shorter list to pick from in 1976).
Clearly having tremendous fun, writer Bridwell began his own resurrections: bringing back Fawcett and Quality Comics characters as guest-stars. First up was the ghostly Kid Eternity, and with the next issue he scripted his masterstroke with ‘The Return of Black Adam’, a Golden-Age villain whose fabled single appearance was a landmark long remembered by fans. That this character is still a huge favourite today shows the astuteness of that decision. That was in Boston, and #29 was set in Buffalo and Niagara Falls where ‘Ibac meets Aunt Minerva!’ a comedic battle of the sexes that was heavy on the hitting.
Another Faux meeting with his greatest rival occurred in #30’s ‘Captain Marvel Fights the Man of Steel’ when the Batson bus reached Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, as folk legend Joe Magarac (the Paul Bunyan of Steel workers) and the Three Lieutenant Marvels guest-starred. All girl villain-team ‘The Rainbow Squad’ found Captain Marvel’s gentlemanly weakness in #31 which heralded the return of patriotic hero Minute Man to save the day.
Tenny Henson pencilled #32’s tale from Detroit as aliens led by Mr. Mind tried to destroy Baseball in ‘Mr. Tawny’s Big Game!’ and fans knew that the good old days were coming to an end. A radical change to Shazam! was coming but mercifully that’s a tale for another time since this book ends with #33’s ‘The World’s Mightiest Race’ when Bridwell, Henson and Colletta reintroduced the Nuclear robotic menace Mister Atom during the Indianapolis 500 motor race.
Although controversial amongst older fans the 1970’s incarnation of Captain Marvel has a tremendous amount going for it. Gloriously free of angst and agony, (mostly) beautifully, simply illustrated, and charmingly scripted, these are clever, funny wholesome adventures that would appeal to any child and positively promote a love of graphic narrative. There’s a horrible dearth of exuberant superhero adventure these days. Isn’t it great that there is somewhere to go for a little light action?
© 1973-1978, 2006 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.