Great Rao writes:I think Don Newton did a few stories - I liked those a lot.
You are correct, sir. And they will be reprinted in Showcase Presents: Shazam! in November of this year.
I have to agree with SuperMonkey; no one's done an entirely successful Cap book since Fawcett got out of the business (however fun some of those Newton, and later Alan Weiss issues were to look at). Captain Marvel does not fit in with the sensibilities of modern comics, which is both his weakness and his strength, really. On the one hand, he'll never be as popular as he once was. On the other hand, no amount of screw-ups by the morons at DC will ever really tarnish the true Captain Marvel, because it's obvious to anyone with eyes that anything after the 50s is not Cap at all.
Captain Marvel had something to offer the world that no other superhero ever really equalled (though Plastic Man came close) and that was FUN, a sense of giddy, ever-imaginative, anything goes fun that gave us talking tigers, mastermind worms, giant robots, cavemen, the lieutenant Marvels, a "Junior" who can't even utter his own name without changing identities and a thousand other kooky ideas that never failed to entertain. Even Superman was a dull Dora next to Cap, a situation that changed only when Otto Binder and other Fawcett alums jumped ship for DC and brought those wild imaginations with them to help build the Silver Age mythos under Uncle Morty.
Take away that sense of fun, start making excuses for why Cap is really a little boy, excise everything "silly" and you're left with another generic musclebound clod in spandex. In other words, ironically, Captain Marvel done Marvel style.
The Captain Marvel situation reminds me of what a critic once wrote about Star Trek; the beast is dead, but the die-hards and accountants trot the body out every few years to run a current through the corpse and watch it twitch. Activity does not always equal life.