The Hero Who Outdid Superman (1 of 3)

And his weird legal and lexical history.

Two weeks ago, Janice sent me this comic. It riffs off the respective first appearances of Superman and…

…well, let’s call him Captain Marvel. That’s what they called him then. He was once the world’s greatest superhero. Now he’s just the most confusingly named. Let’s get into why.

The smash success of Superman brought many imitators, only a few of which DC served with lawsuits. Wonderman and Master Man skipped town the moment the court summons arrived, but Captain Marvel asserted he was an original. And he had a good case.

Homeless orphan Billy Batson follows a weird old guy into a cave—not a course of action I’d recommend—and learns to summon magic lightning by saying the guy’s name, Shazam. This turns him into adult superhero Captain Marvel (Whiz Comics #2—there was no #1).

Captain Marvel sometimes addressed Shazam as “O Great Sir,” not just to kiss up to the boss, but to avoid saying “Shazam” and getting zapped back into Billy.

In classic stories, Captain Marvel and Billy were usually two different personalities—though not that different. As a child newscaster, Billy was responsible for a kid, and the Captain was a goofy, vulnerable kind of adult (Captain Marvel Adventures #80).

SHAZAM was also an acronym: the Captain had the wisdom of Solomon, strength of Hercules, stamina of Atlas, power of Zeus, courage of Achilles, and speed of Mercury. The first draft involved a team of six superheroes, one for each quality, but Fawcett Publications soon simplified it.

(Is courage the thing to borrow from Achilles? He was brave to fight when prophesied to die, I guess, but I’d prefer the near-indestructibility, coupled with a pair of titanium-heeled boots.)

Later stories stretched the acronym as far as it could go. Mary Marvel, a “super-girl” pre-Supergirl, used powers from female benefactors. Black Adam, Captain Marvel’s corrupt predecessor, pulled his from Egyptian gods. But not a lot begins with Z, so Mary had to pretend the wind-god Zephyrus was female, and Adam’s Zeuheti was the god usually spelled Thoth.

(Mary’s acronym almost included “Sappho,” which would have inspired some interesting modern storylines.)

The word shazam is still with us—sometimes better known as the music-identifying app, but also a general “magic word” like abracadabra, alakazam, ta-da. (Do magic words use any vowels except “a”?)

It’s better remembered than Captain Marvel’s most magical feat—outselling Superman in the comics. One can see the appeal. Boys in the 1940s could identify with Billy the way 2000s boys did with the lightning-blessed Harry Potter. And yet the grown-up-looking Captain Marvel, like other heroes, was an ideal of whom they might become. The best of both worlds.

(Elvis Presley preferred to model himself on Captain Marvel Junior.)

Plus, whimsy. The superhero genre is sometimes overeager to prove it has a serious brain inside its circus tights. Jerry Siegel would emphasize some Superman story points were “based on real science.”

Otto Binder and C.C. Beck didn’t care. They…they just didn’t. If they thought it was cool and funny, they would make it happen.

Get that bread, Cap!

What if such whimsy had become the dominant strain of the superhero virus? What if comedy/fantasy first, action-adventure/science fiction second? Panels like these make it easier to imagine.

Things didn’t have to go the way they did—especially if DC’s legal case had failed early, giving Fawcett more resources and better cross-media opportunities.

Tomorrow: What happened instead…one of the most unheroic moments in superherodom.