Showing posts with label CaptainMarvel/MsMarvel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CaptainMarvel/MsMarvel. Show all posts

Thursday, April 4, 2019

THE CONFUSSING HISTORY OF CAPTAIN MARVEL


Since 1940, the name Captain Marvel has been apart of American pop culture. Everyone knew Captain Marvel was a superhero and most people had a vague idea about what the character looked like. They were pretty sure he was a guy in a red or red-ish suit. This year saw two movies released that have people scratching their heads.

"Hey, that's not Captain Marvel! That is a woman! Captain Marvel was a guy!"

And then another person might say, "Hey, I thought that character was Captain Marvel and Shazam was just the magic word he used to change into a superhero!"

The truth is there have been three different Captain Marvel's since 1940 and the two main Captain Marvel's have been revamped in recent years. Let's take a quick history of the various captains.


The first Captain Marvel appeared in Whiz Comics #2 in 1940.  He was first seen on the cover throwing a car, filled with criminals, into a brick wall (this will be important later). Inside it told the story of an orphan newsboy named Billy Batson, who is lead into a dark railroad tunnel by a creepy stranger, who puts him on a psychedelic painted train. It takes him to see an old wizard named Shazam. The wizard says if Billy repeats his name he will be given great powers. Billy says Shazam and a lightning bolt strikes him, changing him into Captain Marvel, a superhero in a red suit with gold trim and a lightning bolt on his chest. Captain Marvel battled a bald, mad scientist named Dr. Sivana, while fighting off the advances of his sexy, blonde daughter Beautia.


Besides the emphasis on magic in Captain Marvel's world, as opposed to the science fiction of Superman's world, one difference, in the early days, was the artwork. It the early days, the face of characters seemed very sketchy and undefined. The faces in Captain Marvel were not just detailed, but recognizable. Dr. Sivana was based on Count Orlock from the silent film Nosferatu. Beautia was based on actress and singer Alice Faye. Captain Marvel was based on actor and future My Three Sons star Fred MacMurray (above). Even later, a villain named Black Adam was based on Bela Lugosi and the comic sidekick Uncle Dudley Marvel was based on W. C. Fields.


At one point in the early 40s, Captain Marvel was more popular than Superman, even beating him to the movie screen in 1941. Republic Pictures produced a movie serial, The Adventures of Captain Marvel. This established the practice of having different actors play Billy and Captain Marvel. Captain Marvel was played by Tom Tyler (above) and Frank Coghlan Jr. played Billy. The flying special effect was created using a dummy on a thin wire. Surprisingly, it still looks realistic after all these years. Of the negative aspects of the movie serial, Captain Marvel doesn't talk and he frequently kills the villains.


So DC Comics sued Fawcett, the company that published Captain Marvel. D. C. lost the first case on a technicality, but appealed. They pointed out that Captain Marvel had a cape and tights, like Superman, and was throwing a car on the cover of his first comic book, like Superman did on Action Comics #1. Fawcett settled out of court and stopped publishing comic books of any kind. Eventually, D. C. acquired the rights to the Fawcett characters.


In 1966 (there's that year again), a small company called M. F. Enterprises launched a Captain Marvel comic book. Their Captain Marvel was an android from outer space, who could split his body into separate parts by yelling "SPLIT!".  Had a sidekick name Billy Baxton. His arch-enemies were named Plastic Man, Dr. Fate and the Bat. Anyone see a problem with all this? This Captain Marvel not only received a cease & desist by Marvel, who was getting ready to launch their Captain Marvel and now had a copyright on the name, but they also got a threat of a lawsuit from D. C., because the villain, the Bat, looked like Batman. Many historians have claimed the M. F. Enterprises Captain Marvel is the Plan 9 From Outer Space/My Mother the Car of comic books.


In 1967, Marvel launched a Captain Marvel character in an anthology entitled Marvel Super-Heroes, which reprinted earlier stories to promote the popular animated TV series by the same name.  Marvel wanted to copyright and trademark the name Captain Marvel. The character changed over time, including wearing a green and white uniform with a helmet in early stories.

This hero was a spy for the Kree empire. He assumed the identity of a dying scientist name Walter Lawson. He soon finds that he likes Earthlings, but things are complicated, because Lawson was being investigated for criminal activity by a military security officer named Carol Danvers (she will be important later). The Krees try to use a bomb to destroy the military base, but Mar-vell manages to save Danvers. His Kree superiors try to have him executed for treason, but he escapes, only to be trapped in the Negative Zone.


At this point, Marvel decided to try to revamp the character, buy giving him a red, yellow and blue suit and, in another nod to the original Captain Marvel, Mar-vell would be summoned to Earth from Negative Zone, by Captain America & the Hulk's teen sidekick, Rick Jones, when he strikes a pair of wrist bands together. He would trade place with Rick, who would go to the Negative Zone, while Captain Mar-vell did his thing. Confused? I am, which is probably why I was not a fan of Captain Mar-vell. The Marvel Bullpen kept changing the character and tinkering with him. He was never very popular, but they kept publishing the comics to keep a copyright lock on the name Captain Marvel.

Thank ya, Thank ya very much!

Then in 1973, D. C decided to re-launch the Fawcett Captain Marvel, who was riding a crest of nostalgia in the early 70s. While he disappeared from publication, elements of the Fawcett Captain Marvel were kept in the public conscious by two entertainment personalities from the South: Elvis Presley and Jim Nabors. Both were fans of Captain Marvel as children. Elvis, used a lightning bolt as a monogram on stationary and other business supplies. He had jumpsuits made that were similar to the Captain Marvel & Captain Marvel Junior costumes. Beginning in his teenage years, Elvis began trying to wear his hair based on Captain Marvel Junior's famous waterfall pompadour (above).


Nabors brought back, what D. C. would later call "The one magic word," while working on The Andy Griffith Show. He said, in an interview on KTXR's Nostalgia Time, felt that his character, Gomer Pyle, said the interjection "GGOOOLLLYY!" too much, so he ad libed, during the filming of one episode and chose "SSSHHAAA-ZAM!!", as a substitute. It got a big laugh from his co-stars, so the writer's decided to us "Shazam" as an alternate expression of amazement for Gomer. While we are on the subject of Mayberry, I should mention that the first actor to play Dr. Sivana on-screen was Howard Morris (above), who played crazy hillbilly Ernest T. Bass. This was in the Legends of the Superheroes TV special of the late 70s.


Because Marvel had a copyright on comic book called Captain Marvel, D. C. had to use Shazam! for the title of the comic book staring the Fawcett superhero. Since Marvel was borrowing from the original Captain Marvel story for their new Captain Mar-vell, D. C swiped an idea from Marvel's revival of another Golden Age Superhero (and Republic serial star) Captain America. In the early Shazam comics, Captain Marvel and the other Fawcett heroes lived on a planet called Earth-S and had been in suspended animation for over twenty years, thanks to Dr. Sivana. Like Captain America &  his alter ego, Steve Rogers, Captain Marvel & his alter ego, Billy Batson, had to try to adapt to modern times. Unlike Captain America's stories, Captain Marvel's stories didn't deal with political or social change, but continued the magical, fairy tale, fantasy world from the original comics which featured talking animals and dinosaurs that looked more like they belonged on The Flintstones than Jurassic Park.

D.C. promoted the character with a Mego action figure, several of the giant sized Collector's Edition comics, which reprinted class Fawcett era stories (including Whiz Comics #2 and that infamous cover), and a live action Saturday morning TV series, than ran from 1974 - 1977, produced by Filmation.

Billy (Michael Gray) & Captain Marvel (Jackson Bostwick)

The TV series didn't feature the villains or other character, just Billy and Captain Marvel. The stories tended to be across between Afterschool Specials and Lassie, with a kid doing something they shouldn't (play with matches in a drought ridden forest, walking on a rock cliff) and needing to be rescued by Captain Marvel. In the 80s, Filmation produced an animated Shazam cartoon, using the same theme music, but faithful to the comic books and including many of the characters.


Now, are you still wondering about the female Captain Marvel from the recent film? Well, in 1977, Marvel launched Ms. Marvel, in which it is revealed that bomb caused Carol Danvers to have the same powers as Captain Mar-vell. Marvel decided that instead of calling her Marvel Girl, they chose to give a nod to the women's lib movement and call her Ms. Marvel. However, many feminist complained that, in later issues, Ms. Marvel wore the skimpiest costume of any female superhero. The character was more popular than the Captain Mar-vell character, so Marvel gave him cancer and killed him off in the early 80s. In 2012, Marvel decided that Carol Danvers should assume the name Captain Marvel and she was given a full body jumpsuit, that she wears in the movie. The original story about Mar-vell posing as a scientist is combined with the Ms. Marvel character for the movie, only the scientist is a woman named Wendy Lawson.


Meanwhile, at D.C, they decided to destroy all of their Multiverses with Crisis On Infinite Earths. This killed off many of D.C's superheroes and merged all the various planets (Earths 1 & 2, Earth- S) into one world. So the Fawcett characters now existed in the same world as the Justice League. They also decided that Captain Marvel would hence forth be known as Shazam and he would have Billy Batson's boyish personality and mentality, but still look like a grown man. In some Justice League stories, Shazam has a puppy love crush on Wonder Woman, who is conflicted because he is a grown man, but still a child. This last incarnation of the original Captain Marvel is the subject of the upcoming Shazam! movie. One reviewer has already called the film "Superman meet Big."

I hope I made this clear, although I doubt it will ever be clear. Let's try to go back over this very quickly.
  1. Shazam was originally Captain Marvel, but now just goes by Shazam. 
  2. Shazam has been in live action in movies & TV before. Captain Mar-vell has never been in a live action production until this year.
  3. Captain Marvel is based on both the Captain Mar-vell & Ms. Marvel.
  4. Because Marvel had the name Captain Marvel copyrighted for a comic book in the 60s, D. C couldn't use the name Captain Marvel in the title of a comic book when they revived the original Captain Marvel in the 70s. They called the book Shazam!, and later threw in the towel and called the character Shazam (see #1).
  5. The Fawcett/D.C character Captain Marvel/Shazam is easy to understand and is closer to a fairy tale than a science fiction adventure. Marvel's Captain Marvel was hard science fiction/space opera. It can be confusing.
I can't wait to see the Shazam! movie, because I was a huge fan of the D.C character as a child. I might watch Captain Marvel sometime, but I did like the Marvel character, so I'm not in a hurry to see it. Then again, I didn't know much about Black Panther and I loved his movie.

On another personal note, I mentioned liking the Shazam/Captain Marvel character, when I was a child. My mother thought Shazam was the characters name. Unfortunately, she passed away in February. I think she would be happy to know that she had his name right all along. 


   
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