Superman's evolution has worked precisely because he never went out of print. Changes happened for the most part gradually and painlessly as he adapted to the needs of each new era. That's not true for Cap, so changing him enough to "work" in the modern era is tantamount to creating a new character from wholecloth
I agree - and what I'm arguing is that a really severe revamp, albeit one with imaginative power, wouldn't be quite so bad an idea.
Whether someone that takes the project has the chops for it is another question entirely, of course, I'm just saying that perhaps the reason Cap hasn't done so well or been as good is not because writers don't get the spirit of the original, but because Captain Marvel suffers from permanent arrested development.
The frank truth is Cap has never worked as a character since his Fawcett days. Whether this is because the various re-treads have changed him too much or not enough is a matter for debate. But when you look at his history it's pretty cut and dried: 40s to 50s = biggest thing on the stands, 70s to today = FLOP. So you can't blame people for thinking Fawcett "got" Cap in ways no one else ever has.
People say the same about Plastic Man; nobody but Cole got him. but I'd argue that Plas suffered from two problems that are identical to Captain Marvel's:
1) conscientious, nostalgic aping of the original stories, but in a context where that aping just doesn't work. Instead of capturing the spirit of the original, it literally duplicates the way they chose to tell their stories.
2) Nobody's really been assigned to Plastic Man that would get the character. As much as I admire Martin Pasko for his incredible Superman and Wonder Woman stories, he was not a good fit for Plastic Man, and certainly not a good fit for Cole-aping.
The only works I'd argue that can't be done without the original creator and original set of circumstances that produced them, are deeply personal works that only the original creator understood. An example would be the Steve Gerber OMEGA THE UNKNOWN or HOWARD THE DUCK, and possibly DEFENDERS, or the Jack Kirby "Fourth World" series.
So in the 1970's, DC brought back C.C. Beck to draw Captian Marvel, but who didn't they bring back?
That's right, Otto Binder.
And thus, while it has been the best DC Cap they made (and I will still get the Showcase collection of it), it just can't compare to Otto Binder's Marvel. Truth is, nothing can.
Well, let me see if I get what you're saying: Marvel Family was sort of like the Lee/Kirby FANTASTIC FOUR in the sense that it was a product of two creators coming together that were bigger than the sum of their parts, who caught lightning in a bottle?
...actually, this may be it.
Maybe it was a unique combination of factors and talents those two men had. However, I'm inclined to think not, because unlike FANTASTIC FOUR, which came from nowhere and was very personal, the Marvel Family, as extraordinary an achievement as it was, was a comic dominated by one great idea (kid becomes an adult hero) that was very much a product of the comics world that produced it, surrounded by periphery like the Talking Tiger and Uncle Marvel that can be jettisoned. In other words, I suspect the reason that the revamps haven't worked is not because a revamp is an exercise in futility for a work only the original creators really got: it's more a combination of bad luck and failure to place talent properly.
If they get someone like, say, Dan Slott or Busiek to write Captain Marvel, now that's different.
There is a category of characters that are so very unintuitive, whose central idea is hard to grasp and idiosyncratic, that consequently they are almost never written correctly. Doctor Strange is another such character, as is the Doom Patrol.
(Green Arrow's solo ventures, I'd argue, have never worked not because he's a character that's hard to grasp, but because he's a character, less common at DC but certainly more common at team-centered Marvel, whose best contributions are to group dynamic and teams; take GA out of the Sattellite League and that whole dynamic and he's less fun and has less to do).
Since then DC has restarted, revamped and updated Captain Marvel many times! Always tryng to make him more modern and each and every single time, they bombed.
Well, the Ordway POWER OF SHAZAM! lasted for several years as a series; certainly not a raging blockbuster on the level of the Busiek AVENGERS, but certainly many more issues than the original HAWKMAN series (which ended at 23 before becoming HAWKMAN AND THE ATOM), the 1967 SPECTRE series (which lasted for 10 issues) or HOWARD THE DUCK (a raging success, but one that only lasted 30+ issues) or the Marv Woflman NOVA (which lasted a little more than two years). And it should be noted that the comics climate in the bust era 1990s was significantly less healthy than today.
I don't know if that's a fair criticism - not because some of the Captain Marvel reboots weren't clueless (they were, especially the 1980s SHAZAM! series, which totally missed the point of Captain Marvel and had him be merely an adult Billy Batson), but because actually, I'd argue the revamps, especially the Jerry Ordway one, didn't go far ENOUGH.
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