 Captain Marvel was originally published not by DC but by Fawcett Comics
in the 1940s. Originally called Captain Thunder, Captain Marvel was in actuality a boy named
Billy Batson who encountered a wizard who taught him the magic word "Shazam!" -- by which he
would transform into a flying super-hreo with a cape. This innovation of a boy's
transformation provided resonance with young readers: in an era in which characters were often
given boy sidekicks, such as
Batman's Robin, in order to aid in young readers'
identification with the stories, Billy Batson could essentially play the role of his own
alter-ego's sidekick.
Despite this clever uniqueness, Captain Marvel's early tales were fairly
clearly a rip-off of DC's
Superman. At the time, super-heroes flying
under their own power were rare, and the combination of this with Superman's enhanced strength
and something of his look -- prominently including the use of a cape -- demonstrated Captain
Marvel's derivative nature, as odd as that might seem in retrospect when such elements seem
commonplace (and not only in comics).
That said, Fawcett's Captain Marvel went in a very different direction,
perhaps in part to distinguish the character from its predecessor. Captain Marvel's adventures
became increasingly openly absurd: for example, his arch-foe Mr. Mind was both the
conventional super-scientist -- and a talking worm. Several of the innovations introduced for
Captain Marvel would themselves become commonplace in the Silver Age: Captain Marvel was
probably the first to have not only campy adventures but female and younger derrivatives of
himself. For example, Captain Marvel's Mary Marvel -- his female version -- was introduced
many years before Supergirl. Some other innovations were even more far-sighted: Captain
Marvel's stories sometimes stretched for many, many issues in an era in which stories continued
from a single issue into the next were rare. It is largely for this that comics scholars
remember the character's heyday.
But Captain Marvel's stories were also fun and stand up well even
today. It is understandable, then, that they began to also sell. And sell well. They
even got their own movie serial, still nostalgicly beloved today. In comics, Captain Marvel
outsold his artistic progenitor Superman. It was probably for this reason that DC bothered to
initiate its lawsuit against Fawcett for infringing on Superman's copyright.
The lawsuit became protracted. Fawcett finally capitulated in 1953, by
which point it simply didn't make much sense to continue the battle. Super-hero titles were
being cancelled across all companies, and Captain Marvel's sales had slipped to the point that
they didn't justify continuing the legal battle. Fawcett surendered the copyright to its
entire staple of super-heroes, including Captain Marvel and family, to DC.
Ironically, Captain Marvel reprints were selling enough that British
publisher Len Miller & Son responded to the end of original material by creating
Marvelman -- a rather more blatent rip-off
than Captain Marvel had been of Superman -- but that's another story.
Despite the advent of the Silver Age, which returned super-heroes to high
sales, DC initially sat on its rights to Captain Marvel, not publishing any new stories. With
the advent of its concept of multiple Earths, DC placed the Fawcett characters it had acquired
on an alternate Earth and let its own characters visit on occasion.
In time, DC launched a new series. By this point, Golden Age publisher
Timely Comics had changed its name to Marvel and had its own Captain Marvel. To avoid a
lawsuit -- on the grounds of creating confusion in the reading public -- DC titled the new
series Shazam!. The company hoped to witness a sales phenomenon on par with Captain
Marvel's Golden Age, but it failed to materialize. Many feel that, as with the relaunches of
Plastic Man (another fondly remembered Golden
Age figure), this was because the new adventures failed to capture the same effortless, zany
spirit as the original stories. Shazam! lasted 35 issues, ending in 1978.
With the advent of
Crisis on Infinite Earths, DC obliterated
its concept of multiple Earths in favor of a single, unified universe. Captain Marvel's exact
place in this universe, like that of many characters, was open to interpretation. There was a
lingering feeling that he ought to have a place as a pillar of the DC universe, based on his
venerable history, but he lacked the series and history thereof to justify it. DC sought to
relaunch Captain Marvel out of its Legends crossover, which followed Crisis (and
also relaunched
Wonder Woman. DC thus offered, in early
1987, the four-issue mini-series Shazam: The New Beginning. It proved to be the
beginning of years of obscurity in which Captain Marvel would appear only very occasionally.
In some sense, this can be understood by the appearance of realism that DC sought for its
revised continuity -- a realism at odds with the often silly spirit of Captain Marvel.
In 1994, Jerry Ordway was given the green light to revive Captain Marvel,
first in a hardcover original graphic novel entitled The Power of Shazam! and then -- in
January 1995 -- in an ongoing series timed to coincide with the graphic novel's softcover
release. The ongoing had many fans among comic writers and artists, but never had particularly
high sales. Despite Captain Marvel's prominent role in 1996's smash hit painted mini-series
Kingdom Come, and various attempts to push
the title, The Power of Shazam! was cancelled.
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