Superman Through the Ages! Forum

enjoy:

http://www.comicbookresources.com/columns/?column=20

Great article! Did anyone read First Thunder, DC's recent "How-Superman-Met-Captain-Marvel" foray? In it, Billy Batson is depicted as a homeless boy whose best friend gets gunned down by Sivana's goons. Consequently, Captain Marvel threatens to torture and decapitate one of the goons, and later threatens Sivana's life. For heaven's sake! Why can't these people just lighten up?

You know, in this fans opinion - the good ol' Cap was just a nifty a superhero as our man in blue.  I always thought the biggest problem was simply how do you have him and Kal in the same universe?  I believe DC should keep him sequestered in his own universe or simply sell him to Marvel or someone.  

I have yet to see any writer come up with a decent way to manage them in the same universe, unless you consider Eart S.  I thought JLU's take on that was interesting, and a good try, but not something that I thought was the answer.  

In all honesty, I think that there would always be some chip on the shoulder of the both of them when they met.  I can't see Cap looking up to Supes.  I mean, if you've got a Superman, who needs a Captain Marvel?  But can you imagine a world where Fawcet won against DC and here I'm posting on a site called "Captain Marvel Thru the Ages"?  Wild.

I think Eric is right and someone should try a Captain Marvel envisioning just like the original stories... maybe I just came up with an idea.

-Angel

I think the problem with Cap Marvel is that he had that long hiatus, without an opportunity to be refined as times changed in his stories...which makes him a perfect candidate for an alternative universe to keep the spirit alive...

You are likely correct in that speculation.  He really should remain in an alternate universe.

We need Showcase Shazam badly!

I agree.  And it would be nice to see a series where he's not part of the DCU.

That's what I meant the Fawcett issues.

DC has never ever done Captain Marvel right. I don't care about those issues. But they can print them after printing the complete Golden Age run. Now I know, that they may not have all the issues. But, they do have a ton of money and there is going to be a new film coming out in a few years, and it was one of the most important comic runs in history. I belive it is worth it.

I'd love to see the original stories, but I'd like to see a lot of the Golden Age DC stories as well, Green Lantern and Dolby Dickles and "Goitrude" and all that stuff the way it really was...

I meant a new series completely outside of the DCU.

This is a tough one - I find it very hard to consider how you could fully develop CM in the same universe as Supes, frankly because they are cut from such a similar cloth.

The thing that is the same about them is that they are both "world heros" so to speak.  What I mean is that they are big enough and able enough - and resultantly - responsible enough to consider world difficulties are their problems, and they are each able to handle them themselves.  Further, in some of the best classic cases they ascribe to be best possible virtues that we ourselves find inspiring.  Sure, that can be said of any hero in a broad sense, but as a case in point - Spiderman is generally a very local or immediate sphere of influence kind of guy.

As a counter point, I can see Thor and Superman or CM in the same universe as Thor is much more aloof to the world from his Asgardian viewpoint - he's not an Earth bred, born or raised respresentative.  Heck, any other Supes clone would also be easy to work out in the same universe as they are mainly just upstarts and wanna-be.

But the most heroic version Supes would be by nature an apex of idealistic human virtues, as a most heroic version of CM would be too.  So in their most trying and challanging circumstances, they would pretty much do the same thing - as Kingdom Come demonstrated.  Had the shoes been in the other foot, Supes would have done exactly as CM had.

However, there is one thing that I really agree with about CM not being as developed due to his hiatus.  I don't think I have ever heard of anyone really developing why those Gods and heros of a couple of different backgrounds (herbrew and Greek and Roman, to be technical) got together to bestow their powers to the Marvels.  What a neat story that would could be!  There's as much potential background development there as any Krypton or Smallville stories.

Ouch, doesn't look good for Billy.

 :arrow:  From WIZARD #176 ...

TRIALS OF SHAZAM! (July, 12 issue mini)
Team: writer Judd Winick, artist Howard Porter
New Take: DC promises a major change to Captain Marvel that's "along the lines of John Byrne's revision of Superman during the '80s" boasted Winick. "There has to be a place that Captain Marvel can occupy, and that is the realm of magic and mysticism."

Oh man...

I believe these days if you are a writer you're supposed to read boards - then do the exact opposite of what you read.

(Not really, but there are days you think that's the way it is.)

Hopefully they are taking the advice of the fans who wanted a more grim and gritty Cap, as Julian mentioned awhile ago.
 :D

Trials of Shazam! update

http://www.newsarama.com/forums/showthread.php?t=71004

DC Comics have never done a good Captain Marvel comic, not pre-crsis, not post-crisis, not ever.

It doesn't seem that will be changing anytime soon.

I am however, looking forward to this:

http://dccomics.com/comics/?cm=5806

I think Don Newton did a few stories - I liked those a lot.


I've lost count of how many times I've heard this one before...

:s:

>>
JW: He lacks an identity. Part of it is because, like the major characters in the DCU, he’s incredibly old. But he’s never really had an update. He’s never really been integrated into the modern day. Bill Batson is a kid who’s two degrees away from wearing his newsboy’s cap and hollering “Paper, mister?” on the corner while he sells newspapers. So, when we started talking about it, we started talking about what it would take to bring Captain Marvel into 2006, not to start with a Year One on this, but to move him into the modern day<<

Uh, guess he forgot that his origin *involved* his being homeless and selling newspapers (until he meets the wizard Shazam in that subway tunnel)?!

From what I read, this sounds, well, not very interesting; seems like they missed the point of Captain Marvel via the "let's dump everything whimsical about him" remarks... plus, still think Cap's problem is that he's now forced to share (along with a zillion other heroes) the same Earth as Superman; think he'd be better off back on his own Earth where he'd be the top dog (vs. being looked on as the "Mets" to Superman's "Yankees")...

Great Rao writes:



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.

Why don't they ask the Hernandez Bros to take up the torch?

Wow, you used the F word. :lol: Whatever happened to fun in modern comics? Now, every comic is a political satire or inarticulate parody of what once was great.

I'll still give Jeff Smith's Captain Marvel a shot but not this revision.

Is that still on the drawing board?  I haven't heard anything about it for the last few years.

:s:

According to a March 2006 silverbulletcomics interview:

JS: I’m currently working on a four issue mini-series for DC Comics called SHAZAM: Monster Society of Evil. Shazam is the magic word that transforms little Billy Batson into superhero Captain Marvel, one of the most popular characters from the Golden Age of comic books, and one of my personal favorites.

JB: Yes!!! When are we gonna finally see that Shazam story????

JS: SHAZAM: Monster Society of Evil is coming along. The first issue is in the can and the second one is well under way. I know people think Shazam is taking a long time, because we announced it so long ago, but it’s only been 18 months since I finished BONE. It takes a couple of years to make one of these big mini-series. But I’m enjoying the freedom of working on a well established character, and it will be out soon enough.


Also, check out colorist, Steve Hamaker's website:

http://www.steve-hamaker.com/shazam.htm

Because the industry has been taken over by bean counters and those who feel super-heroes are silly and need to be made more relavent.

There are those writers who feel 'This is stupid, I'm going to do my best to show how dumb this is to the people who enjoy it.'  I think Garth Ennis is one who does his best to destroy super-hero comics to show that characters like the Punisher or Preacher are more 'real'

A modern Shazam!/Captain Marvel can be done.

If you consider He-Man a modern Captain Marvel. http://www.he-man.org/

The 2002 reboot didn't fail due to the storytelling, it failed due to Cartoon Network and a lack of interest in the toys.

Try reading Hitman or The Pro...  foul-mouthed and irreverant stuff, to be sure, but it's clear he has love for the genre.  For the Superman-inclined, check out his "How To Be A Superhero" story.

Huh? Garth Ennis wrote a Superman story? Where did this appear? I have a certain guilty fondness for Ennis' style, though it is rather facile. Some of the tough guy dialogue he writes for The Punisher is actually very witty, but I don't really want to see him doing Superman.

For the most part, Ennis treats superheroes as dark comic relief.

One Hitman story, guest starring Superman, has the two discussing issues etc. At the end Superman flies away and Hitman kills his target. What would have been right? Superman stopping the murder.

I hear you! When Superman is around, everyone gets out alive. That's canonical. Ennis just can't do noble, which says a lot about him personally.

I am not as swift to dismiss the possibility of a Captain Marvel update as others are.

The reason is that Captain Marvel was denied something that Superman, Wonder Woman, and Batman all received: continuous publication.

Superman as a character changed from the 1940s to the 1970s and was still demonstratably Superman. I think it would be unreasonable to assume that Captain Marvel would still be fighting Crocodile Men from Punkus and the earth coming to life and throwing all humans, once we get into the more science fiction and adventure elements of the 1960s, a period with very different storytelling and emphasis. Note how different the trolls and paint-faced robots of the Monster Society of Evil are from the time travelling tyrants of the Jerry Siegel Legion of Super-Villains. Note how different late 1950s-early sixties space foe Brainiac is from Marvel's space enemy, the Goatman.

Cap on the other hand, suffers from permanent arrested development. When we think of Captain Marvel, we think of 1940s-1950s Cap with Otto Binder. Now, try to imagine a world where Batman was canceled in 1962, when we had the Bat-Family of Batwoman, Bat-Girl, Ace the Bat-Hound, and so forth, and without Len Wein and Englehart and others to give us their take, which led to Batman and his world being viewed as radically different.

Obviously, this comparison is inexact as Batman and Captain Marvel are different in many ways. However, all this said, I cannot blame nor hold it against any creators for not being 100% in tune with the Lieutenant Marvels and Mr. Tawny, or with the very, very 1950s vibe of the entire series.

Granted, Captain Marvel has had a few series here and there, but even so, he has something that Superman has never had to contend with: the perception that his 1940s-1950s take as his "definitive" one.

Now, note this is an entirely different question than saying, "Will Judd Winnick deliver on Captain Marvel," as I have never read anything by Winnick I really like. I'm just talking about the IDEA here.

I am not 100% against updating him as long as it's just as fun as his Golden Age run. I am still looking forward to Jeff Smith's All-Star Captain Marvel, well like Alex Ross's Justice, it won't be called that but that is what it is.

Yeah, I think the gap is pretty documented in this thread, actually, he COULD be another super powerful being, I just like the idea of his stories being in another universe, where he could live free with his goofy family and villains, rather than being a close analog of Superman...

I don't mind if it's set in a self-contained universe or in the DC continuity, as long as you can pick up a copy and know it's going to be different and funny. I quite like the current insistence on Captain Marvel as a magical being (this was not particularly evident in the Golden Age), as this puts him in a different category from most superheroes anyway*. You could probably use him quite well with DC's magical set anyway; maybe he should be a Vertigo character, except, you know, a funny one.

I loved Darwyn Cooke's treatment of him in The New Frontier, with Billy Batson on the Moon scoffing ice cream. That's the sort of thing I want to see, not the homeless kid who sees his best friend cut in half by machine gun fire and goes off on a revenge spree.

*I even liked the way he sort of killed himself in DKR 2, by vanishing "like a dream".