Terry Barrett writes…
I know almost nothing about comic books and you seem to know everything about comic books. Can you explain why there's a movie with a character named Captain Marvel and another movie called Shazam! about a character named Captain Marvel?
I can. In 1939, a company called Fawcett Publishing introduced a super-hero by that name as a quick response to debut of Superman. That Captain Marvel was created by a writer named Bill Parker and drawn by artist C.C. Beck. He was a young orphan boy named Billy Batson who could turn into the adult hero Captain Marvel by shouting the magic word, "Shazam!" The comic was a huge success with sales that sometimes dwarfed those of Superman…and so the firm that owned Superman — the company we now know as DC Comics — sued over the similarities.
The lawsuit dragged on into the fifties. By that point, sales of Captain Marvel comics had declined and the folks at Fawcett were less interested in keeping their hero alive than in ridding themselves of the lawsuit and the attendant legal fees. They settled outta-court with DC, paying a reported $400,000 and getting out of the comic book business. They later got back in but did not revive the Good Captain because they'd agreed never to publish him again without DC's consent.
In 1966, a small publisher named Myron Fass realized the name "Captain Marvel" was up for grabs. It still had a certain amount of fame and since the hottest thing on the comic racks was the new Marvel line, he figured it might be a commercial title for a new hero. He commissioned Carl Burgos (who had once upon a time created the Human Torch) to create a brand-new Captain Marvel, totally unlike the Fawcett version.
This one was an android from another world who could fly and order his arms and legs to split from his body by yelling "Split!" If it sounds like a stupid idea for a comic, it was.
Martin Goodman, who then owned Marvel, was pretty unhappy about this infringement on the use of the word "Marvel." He got his lawyers busy and he also gave the order for his company to quickly come up with a new Captain Marvel which they began publishing. There was another of those outta-court settlements and the Myron Fass version went away. In fact, Fass never published color comic books again, publishing just about everything else, including gory black-and-white horror comics in magazine form.
Marvel's Captain Marvel debuted in 1967 shortly before the Fass version went away. This one also was totally unlike the Fawcett hero. His first story was done by Stan Lee and Gene Colan, though others were apparently involved in its development. It quickly became one of those comics that was handed around from writer to writer and artist to artist (never a good sign) with frequent revamps and format changes — some successful for a time, some not. There were many points where it probably would have been canceled had not Marvel's lawyers recommended keeping a book called Captain Marvel in print to preserve the company's claim on the title.
They had all the more reason to protect it in 1973 when, based on a suggestion from Jack Kirby, DC made an arrangement with Fawcett. The old Billy Batson Captain Marvel was revived as a DC comic…but since it couldn't be called Captain Marvel, they named the comic Shazam! and in a sub-title, noted that it featured a hero named Captain Marvel. DC later bought out every interest Fawcett had in the property.
Both Captains Marvel have appeared intermittently, not always to acceptable sales, and both have undergone changes as various creative teams attempted to find something that readers would support for a while. DC has changed the name of their Captain Marvel to Shazam but the old name pops up now and then. Marvel's C.M. has changed more over the years with the name passing to protagonists of different races and genders. That's a long explanation that you don't need and it's one I have no interest in wading through. Perhaps the current movie versions will each establish one particular version for an extended period.
Anyway, that's how come Marvel has a comic book called Captain Marvel featuring a character named Captain Marvel, and DC has a comic book called Shazam! featuring a character that is officially referred to as Shazam but sometimes Captain Marvel. Which is all you really wanted to know, right?
