The Hero Who Outdid Superman (3 of 3)

Can you name him? Can he name HIMSELF?

Billy Batson was, it seemed, canceled forever. Forever turned out to be about twenty years long: DC revived him under its own banner in 1973. During that twenty-year gap, other publishers moved in to create “Captain Marvels” of their own. One was a robot who could split himself into flying body parts—published by MF Enterprises.

He and his publisher didn’t last a year, so NBD, MF. The series had some pretty obvious nods to its predecessor, including the magic words “Split” and “Xam”—sounds like “-zam”—and the robot’s good friend Billy (Captain Marvel Presents the Terrible 5 #1).

But the other publisher was Marvel, eager to get a leg up on anything with “Marvel” in its name.

Of Marvel’s Captain Marvels, one died (and pretty much stayed dead). One went insane and destroyed the universe (he got less interesting after that). One married her girlfriend. One briefly led the Avengers, then moved on to at least four other aliases—Photon, Spectrum, Pulsar, Auntie Monica. And one became the most powerful Avenger and joined the MCU. There were others.

But for our purposes, Marvel’s most relevant “Captain Marvel” isn’t a character at all. It’s just the name “Captain Marvel”—with a little superscript “TM” after it. Yep, Marvel owns the trademark, and after fifty-odd years, it’s clear that it’s not gonna let go of it.

DC once hoped it might. Having once argued that CM-without-TM was a Superman clone, the company was now like, “This is such an original character, everybody!” But it couldn’t publish comics named “Captain Marvel,” so it released title after title—plus a television series or two—marketing him under the name “Shazam.” Which only further confused most readers—“Wait, you mean that’s not the red guy’s name?”

Around 2011, history repeated itself. Billy Batson’s corporate owners once again gave up the legal fight. They kept publishing their hero, but renamed him “Shazam,” changing the name of the wizard to—”The Wizard.” (Marvel has a character named the Wizard seen below, but that’s not a trademark conflict.)

However, does this mean Billy Batson can’t say his own superhero name? This was a problem back in the day for the spinoff character Captain Marvel Junior, who got powers the same way Billy did, but instead of Shazam, his magic word was Captain Marvel. The first two words of “Captain Marvel Junior.”

The 2011 reboot tried to promote the idea that magic words require intentionality. By that rule, saying Shazam would only change Billy if he meant it to.

But that idea didn’t stick: accidental transformations were a key plot point in a lot of those older stories, and a hero who can’t say his name has the goofy charm the modern treatments try to recapture (The Marvel Family #1).

In the 2019 film clip below, he transforms by accident.

Maybe we should just call the hero “Billy”? But that has its problems too! In most DC Comics treatments, as in the movies, Shazam and Billy are the same person. But in recent comics, Billy and the hero have been diverging in personality—and Billy’s taken to calling that hero “the Captain” (Shazam v5 #12, 2024).

So, to sum up, our hero’s original name has been stolen in his sleep, his new name used to be his mentor’s name, he mostly can’t say that new name aloud, but he uses a fragment of his old name when addressing the kid he’s sometimes the same person as. In a crowning irony, Billy Batson returned to theaters in 2019, just as Marvel released a movie called—Captain Marvel.

(By the way, Billy Captain Shazamarvel Batson was the first superhero in theaters, back when action movies were done as serials. Weird how DC doesn’t talk more about that fact, isn’t it?)

Ugly legal battles have shaped Ca—Shazam’s history. And the world’s changed since his debut—radio newscasters have all but disappeared, and child labor laws would keep Billy from being one. The audience for superhero stories isn’t as innocent, either.

And yet, somehow, he persists. To many, he still represents that innocence. And if we can believe a man can fly, or that a bolt of lightning can imbue a kid with the powers of gods, maybe we can talk ourselves into believing the rest of it makes some kind of sense, too.

That’s how we approach language, as well. It’s quirky and weird and doesn’t always make sense, but we just keep making use of it anyway. And now and then, having some fun with it.

Next: Microstic #4!