Dear Watchers: an omniversal comic book podcast

Welcome to Dear Watchers in Omniversal comic book podcast, where we do a deep dive into the multiverse.

We are traveling with you through the stories and the worlds that make up the omniverse of fictional realities we all love. And your watchers on this journey are me, Captain Thunder, Guido, and me.

Well, my name used to be Rob, of course, but I just found out that's trademarked, so I'm just Shazoom now.

Or you need to be like Grub or something.

Grob. Exactly.

The knockoff version. That's what I was going for with mine. Because Captain Thunder is a weird moment in this, but, uh, yeah, it's a weird name's. Sake day mhm and before we get.

Into our litigious episode this week, dito what's new in our little section of the multiverse?

Well, we recently in New York City went to a very cool exhibit that's so cool it's worth telling our listeners about if you are in New York City in the next month that it's still running and have a chance, go. But even if you're not, we want to tell you because it involves two former guests of our show. So we went to the Wonder Woman exhibit at the City Reliquary, which is about the creation of Wonder Woman in New York and, uh, the women in particular who supported that creation with William Moulton Marston and their link to the birth control movement in New York. And really, really cool stuff. It's called, uh, wonder Woman. New York City's. Heroes of Heterodoxy. And it was in part curated by former guest Tim Hanley, who wrote amazing books on Wonder Woman and other female heroes. And so he did a lot of work on it. And then we went with former guest Joey from Midtown Comics. So it was, uh, great fun to see Tim's incredible work there and to learn about really cool connections that I didn't know about even as a huge Wonder Woman fan for decades. And it was great fun to go do that with Joey.

And there's a small, uh, Spiderman exhibit there as well, too, that people can check out.

I forgot. And that is really the coolest thing that they should publish a book of, because what is it?

So in one of the Spiderman comics, they listed his address in Queens. So people actually started to write to this address in Queens. A lot of the little kids and what is super, how can you make this up? Kind of thing. The person that lived at that address, their last name was Parker, and they.

Were connected to this.

So they were able to get this letters there. There's a credit card with Peter Parker's name on it.

A credit card. Solicitation.

Solicitation. Yeah. So there's all kind of fun stuff. A whole wall of these letters that you can check out.

Yeah. But really cool letters from kids around the world, some who think Spiderman is real and are writing to him and asking him to wear the costume or give them some web shooters. Really cool stuff. So, yeah, really fun. Visit to see the city relocary in Brooklyn, new York City. And thanks to Tim for that great work and Joey for joining us on that adventure.

So you should check that out. And if you are checking us out for the first time, we have three sections of our travels today. Origins of the story. What inspired this other reality? Exploring, multiversity. We dive deeper into our alternate universe and pondering possibilities. We examine the impact and what's followed or coming in the future.

And, uh, please continue to support us through reviews, wherever you're listening, spreading the word on social media. And remember, you can find out the other stuff we're doing, including our Spinoff bonus series over on our coffee by visiting dearwatchers.com and clicking Join.

And with that, Dear Watchers, welcome to Episode 88, and let's check out what's happening in the Omniverse with today's alternate universe. And today we are asking the question, what if Shazam or Captain Marvel created the destruction of Earth by atomic bombs in the name of protecting America?

Yeah. So what a question. And I think our listeners will find out why. That's the question on this unknown Earth that we journey to. It's even a bit of a stretch, I would say, to call it an imaginary Earth. It predates DC, though. DC has reclaimed it as an imaginary Earth, and within the story, it kind of turns out it's not really imaginary anyway, so more on all of that in a bit. But for our purposes, this is kind of Earth s, which is what DC has classified all of the Shazam Marvel family stories as Earth s, I guess. But I'd rather call it Earth shazadam.

Love it. So this character Shazam, captain Marvel. Complicated history, right? So we're going to try to coalesce, uh, 100 years of development into just a few minutes here. And it'll kick us off.

But we'll start with some background on the character, since we've never talked about him before. And then we'll go into how he ended up a DC character because it was not a straight path. So Billy Batson and his alter ego, Captain Marvel, aka Shazam, debuted in Wiz Comics Number Two, which we'll talk more about in just a, um, moment. Created by CC. Beck and Bill Parker. After the success of Superman and Batman. This is Fawcet Publications, who start their own comic line and their circulation director told the staff, give me a Superman, only have his other identity. Be a ten or twelve year old boy rather than a man. And that is how we ended up with this. So writer Bill Parker created a story of six different superheroes, each one with a power from a mythological figure. But Fawcett decided it would be best to combine the six into one person who would embody the six. And then they were flirting with and actually published some black and white ashcans of the character as Captain Thunder, and that name was already trademarked. They ended up with Captain Marvelous and then Captain Marvel. And of course, this debut was a huge success at the time. Ended up getting lots of great stories told by Otto Binder, who's responsible for the more satirical take and the world building with the Marvels and all the other villains, and then eventually getting written and drawn by Joe Simon, Jack Kirby, a lot of other legends working on the character in the 40s. Uh, you get the Marvel family. You get spin off titles. You even have hoppy the Marvel bunny. And, uh, throughout the golden age of comics, actually, the Marvel Captain Marvel title outsold all others. Captain Marvel Adventures, apparently, in 1944, sold 14 million copies, which is remarkable when you think about comics now selling tens of thousands of copies, um, at most, often other than a few hits. And at one point, it was circulated biweekly with 1.3 million copies and issues. So they started branding it as the largest circulation of any comic magazine. And even though we will talk about some Faucet adventures, we do want to know how Shazam became the Shazam we know today. So in 2011, it wasn't until then, in the new 52 that his name gets changed to Shazam for a lot of reasons. According to Jeff Johns, at that point, he's at DC because Shazam is the word most associated with the character. So we thought it made sense, he said. But apparently, in 2023, when we are recording this, mark Wade said the name might be up for another change. They might be calling him the Captain in a new series coming out later this year. We'll see what that's all about. But we need to see how did he get to DC.

Yeah, so it's the 1940s, and Captain Marvel is at the top of the world. All these issues are being sold. And then DC, then national, drops their own atomic bomb on Fawcett because they sue Fawcett for copyright infringement, alleging that the character was based on Superman. So it goes to trial in 1948, and the judge declared that Captain Marvel was, in fact, an infringement. But DC was found to be negligent in their own copyright on several of their Superman daily newspapers and on, um, this legal technicality. In 1951, it was awarded in Fawcett's favor. DC appealed in 1952. And a new judge said that Captain Marvel stories were an infringement, but that the character itself was not an infringement. So guess what? It goes back to another court. So ultimately, all this legal wrangling, faucet actually decides to settle with DC, paying them an estimated $400,000 and agreeing never to publish Captain Marvel ever again. But at this point, also, the sales were actually dwindling, and Faucet decided to shut down its comic division in 1950, 319 54, kind of the close of the golden age. There let's jump a few to the 1972 DC publisher Carmine infrantino has entered an agreement with Fawcett to actually license Captain Marvel. But by this time, Marvel comics had trademarked their own Captain Marvel characters. So the books were released as Shazam, the original Captain Marvel. Though, starting with issue 15, they changed that subtitle to the world's mightiest mortal following a cease and desist from Marvel. So Captain Marvel reappeared in DC comics in 1973, still drawn by the original artist, CC. Beck. So DC was actually paying Fawcett per appearance of the Marvel family. But in 1991, DC's Paul Levitt said, quote, we worked out a buyout, and not only of Captain Marvel, but of all of the remaining Faucet comic assets, including stacks of comics that could find their way into the DC library. And by, uh, this point, actually, Faucet had been sold to CBS. And Paul Levitt actually worked out the deal with David Pecker, who would go on to own the national enquirer and be involved in all these shady dealings. So lots of legal wranglings to get us to where we are today.

And there's so many tidbits in that story that we didn't even include that we came upon in research, because it's such a wild story. It could be a documentary or a book, and it certainly should be. But the way that the court case fell apart and how Fawcett then started actually trying to research and bring evidence into court of other heroes who did stuff before superman, so they brought in, like, popeye to show that someone had super strength before Superman did in comic strips. So lots of back and forth in those cases. That is really intriguing and interesting. And I think what I was struck by before we get into our show today, I was struck by the fact that today there are just dozens of superman knockoffs and they never, ever pursue legal action. So it's interesting, I guess, because it was so much more unique and modern at the time that they felt like they could stake a claim on this idea. And nowadays, they obviously would never go after the boys or invincible or any of these things that you couldn't even call parody but are using the Superman archetype. So it was interesting as I was reading more about this case, and when we started reading Captain Marvel, I was like, wow, this is not that similar. But all right. I mean, there's that stuff we read about where they actually debuted Sivana before Alex Luther. So Captain Marvel is facing a bald, super smart scientist, and then Superman does. Of course, they cited Superman had already met ultra humanite, who's bald also, but still weird back and forth stuff and.

Saying that Captain Marvel then became kind of more satirical and funny. But then superman became more satirical and funny. So all these kind of things borrowing from each other. Very twisted background. But, Gito, what is your background with shazam, aka the original Captain Marvel.

Obviously, I think everyone who reads comics knows who he is. My first introduction was probably the same as a lot of people's first introduction, which is Kingdom Come. He plays a great, great role in Kingdom Come. And we have not covered Kingdom Come, but one day we will. And you will see what a great role he plays in it and what a great story it is. But he only then became of interest to me when Jeff Johns was writing him because I'm a big fan of Jeff Johns's writing. And so I read a few of the miniseries over the last 20 years, and I've been reading every miniseries consistently that's come out. He hasn't had a major ongoing, but I've been reading a bit of him. I don't know the back story. I don't care too much to know it. It's a little convoluted. I don't love the mythology stuff in it that much. I don't love the Marvel family, though. I enjoyed the movies and I've enjoyed the recent miniseries that has exposed me to more of them. Particularly the most recent one were Mary Marvel's, the new Captain Marvel. So, yeah, that's it moderately, um, familiar. How about you? What was your background?

I would say actually kind of the same. I never was not a character I certainly read and was a character already seemed very much in the past when I was reading comics. But I loved the wackiness of it. This was definitely a character I was introduced to by reading the DC Who's Who and really introduced to his cadre of villains because he has some great wacky villains. Dr. Sivana, who is like Alex Luther, but really creepy and weird looking and actually modeled Alfred Maxwreck. We saw the original Nosferatu in our research. But I loved, of course, the idea of Mr. Mind, the little worm that can control people and has the voice box. Captain Nazi. I mean, what villain isn't crazy if his name is Captain Nazi and all those other villains that he had? So that was really the way and I did like the goofiness of it, but I would just pick up issues here and there. It was certainly never something I read all the way through in its entirety. Well, let us go.

Let's begin our trip to the very.

Beginning with our origins of the story.

Right now on this very show, you're going to get the answer to all your questions.

Our amazing story begins a few years ago. So this is Whiz Comics Number Two from February 1940 from Faucet Publications. And it's called Introducing Captain Marvel.

It's written, colored and edited by Bill Parker, penciled and inked by CC. Beck. We read it because it is the first appearance of Shazam, Captain Marvel as we know him. Again. There's the Captain thunder. Weird stuff. But this is really the first appearance and the first use of that name. So in the origin, if you're not too familiar. It has our protagonist, Billy Batson, who is asked by a stranger to go down into a tunnel, encounters the wizard Shazam, and the wizard Shazam tells him that he can give him his power if he calls down Shazam, standing for solemn and Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles, Mercury, and including the strengths of each of them. And Billy does this and then can turn into the adult man, Captain Marvel, and goes on his merry way, fighting against Sivana and professor, who is also Professor Phantom, I guess in this, known as Professor Phantom. I didn't know that. So that's pretty much it for the Origin. And I would assume it was probably our first time reading it for both of us. What do you think of it?

It's got a lot of those classic golden age things that don't quite always make sense. Like the guy that leads him to Shazam then just disappears. You, uh, figure it's going to be Shazam, but no, it's actually a separate person because then there is one panel where they're actually together on the same panel.

Yeah. I'm going to assume you find out more about who that is, even if it's a retcon, but possibly even in the bet that they explore it more since they do go into the world.

And likewise, another goofy thing is when Shazam bestows the power onto Billy and then he doesn't just vanish, but instead of giant stone that's above his head, held by just like this little string just falls on him and crushes him.

Well, that's not goofy. Uh, I think it's a myth of some kind.

I guess it's like some kind. Yes.

Yeah, it's absurd, but, um, the whole thing is absurd. And they're really leaning into the mythology of it and calling on all sorts of myths that I'm not familiar with. But the art is so good, especially for really it's more, uh, empty art. It's less detailed, even more compared to some of the Superman or Batman early stuff that we've seen. That has a lot of line work in it. This doesn't have quite as much line work. The detail is actually in the images themselves, of course, with the, uh, most striking and I think recognizable because they even referred to it in one of the articles that we read with that train in the underground that he takes them to the tunnel. It's just all very almost Art Deco looking, but dark, but bright and colorful and creepy at the same time. And then, of course, Savannah's look is really fun. So all of that's fun.

A little tint, right? Don't they look a little bit like the Tintin characters?

I never yeah, I think all those early comic strip faces off.

It's also like Little Orphan Annie where it's just like a black dot and that kind of super cartoonish, even like the Dick Tracy kind of art there as well.

Yeah. As for the origin itself I do think it's quite different from Superman. I don't agree with the judges who ruled on this. Um, maybe there are stories that eventually echo a little bit too much, but just the fact that A is not an alien, b is a child, which is a huge difference. To have a child turning into this person is really interesting. And I think that's where writers have found the most interesting stuff to explore with a character. But then even the weight, the powers he has from these six different Gods pantheon, uh, of Gods, all of that, it feels really different from Superman mhm, and it's interesting. The story is a straightforward Golden Age story, with one exception. Although maybe this actually is also Golden Age, but he threatens Sivana with death. And I thought that was really interesting. And it struck me because so many later writers have explored and almost made Captain Marvel shazam a little more of the child who gets powers. Even the movie did that plot. What would it be like if this child could become an adult and get powers? And that moment almost felt like that to me. Like, you have this kid who's raging, essentially, and he's like, well, when we meet again, you'll be behind prison walls or dead, and he smashes everything in the lab. So it just felt like kind of a tantrum. So that's the one aspect thing I.

Noticed super explored here. I mean, it's very there's not a lot of dialogue in general or depth to this, necessarily, but I would imagine that's something that's certainly developed so much later with the character.

Yeah. So it was fun to explore yet another Golden Age origin that I hadn't read before. And I think I'd read more Golden Age captain Marvel. I'm not going to seek it out anytime soon, but I wouldn't be opposed to it.

I'd mostly look at this. Uh, you don't even need to read it. You really need to look at the CC Beck art. That is definitely the standout aspect of this.

Well, like you said, it does not have a ton of dialogue. And it's interesting because some Golden Age stuff does. It's almost weighted down by it, I'd say. Especially even some of that old early horror stuff you see has, uh, these long narrations and caption boxes. And this doesn't even if you do read it, it's quite quick.

Uh, and there's some funky things like the caption boxes are at the bottom of the panel, but you're really supposed to read them first, but your eye reads down, so by the time you've got into the caption box, it's already covered in the dialogue that's right above it. So those are kind of just formatting things of clearly, this is so early in the comics as a medium that I feel like there must be still working out okay, how do people actually read these? And in our research about the actual writer, Bill parker. He came from magazines. He was kind of just thrust into this comic and then he didn't really want to be there. He went back to writing basically a Popular Mechanics kind of magazine. After this. Well, let us go into the Atomic age with our Exploring a Multiversity.

I am your guide through these vast new realities. Follow me and ponder the question, what.

If and this is Captain Marvel Adventures issue number 66 from October 1946. And it says the Atomic war.

No, the title of the issue is the Atomic War. But on the COVID it says, captain Marvel battles the dread atomic war.

Atomic war.

And as our listeners saw from our question, that's not quite what we think happened. What was our question?

Our question is, what if Shazam created the destruction of Earth by atomic bombs in the name of protecting America? Woohoo.

So this is written by Otto Binder, penciled and inked by Ccbeck and edited by Wendell Crowley. So a, uh, quick synopsis of this is that Billy Batson, who at this point is a reporter, has his Daily News report on the radio, interrupted with all sorts of bulletins. First that Chicago gets struck by Adam bombs, and then I have to stop.

You too, because his Daily News report is, there's nothing really happening today. That's what he says.

Yeah, this is a gorgeous day. I haven't much news to report. No crimes, no fires, no tragedies.

You turn on WNYC or CNN, it's like nothing much to report today.

It seems as if the world has reached a nice, peaceful state of happiness and prosperity.

Last long.

Quickly gone with the report that he got that Chicago was under attack by atomic bombs. He goes to try to save some people, a woman and a child, and turns out that they're dying from the radioactive burns, not even from the explosion itself. He goes to try to stop some of the missiles that are landing, but they're firing absolutely everywhere. And the US. Army recruits him to find out who's firing the weapons so that they can fire back. And, uh, so he goes to the north. No country is ever named throughout the issue. So he goes to the north to find out what's happening, identifies the country that is firing, but then when he goes there, he discovers first of all, he does drop a bomb on them, by the way. But then he discovers that in fact, a bunch of other countries have started firing atomic bombs at each other, and because they can't tell where the bombs are coming from either. So almost all of the major cities in the world are destroyed. The farms are dying because of the atomic fallout. And so he becomes the only thing left alive on Earth. But shocker turns out, uh, twist. This imaginary Earth was all a TV show trying to communicate the horrors of atomic war to a family watching Billy Batson's. Now, TV news broadcast that he has. So kind of an imaginary story, but kind of, I guess, a televised version of events, because Billy even says, oh, we couldn't afford to show you what atomic war would really look like.

Billy says, we were handicapped by the studio limitations showing the horrors of the atomic war. It's like, dude, you actually showed explosions. You showed people dying. So I don't know how many handicaps they had.

Yes. So what do you think?

Uh, it's a crazy story, uh, to the point where you said he goes up north, but it even says he actually goes to the North Pole. And I was thinking, well, that's to.

See he no, he's going to look at where they're firing from.

But I actually thought, like, would Santa be dropping the box like that's? That's the kind of I thought he could go there. But on the other hand, it gets like, so brutal, especially for a comic, it seems, from 1946, because when he first pulls that woman and the baby out of the house, and as you said, they're dying from the radiation poison. It is a baby. It is a baby in her arms. It's not just, uh, like a toddler. Not that that should make any difference, but it is like a baby. So certainly going there, it seems like it's pushing the envelope of what was essentially a kid's comic to show this.

Well, and in that way, the reason I chose this and the reason I also chose to tell you nothing about it, is it is interesting because it is really solidly anti war. Even though I think it messes up the narrative by choosing American nationalism over anything else, I think that the overarching story, and in particular, uh, when we return to Earth s and find out that it was all televised, is all really trying to say war is bad. And so it's pretty brutal. And so, I mean, a little historic context. The atomic bombs are dropped by the US. Twice in Japan the year prior, so 1945, and in 1946. We know there are a good number of anti atomic war things out there. They're not the predominant voices, nor are they certainly the government voices, but John Hershey's book Hiroshima, for example, comes out in 1946, actually a few months before this. So I do wonder if that kind of inspired because he was the reporter on the ground in Hiroshima who reported the reality of how horrific this was. So it is interesting that it's not shying away. It's almost a PSA issue, which is also what I think is interesting about it.

Mhm very much a PSA. And it feels the chaos that's created by this. As you said, no one knows who's dropping the bombs. We never hear countries and then other countries are taking advantage of this. This feels like the kind of thing that Dr. Strangelove and stuff would be exploring. But 20 years later, 20 years later from this. And we're still kind of talking about today and even in things like why the Last Man and the Last of US, what happens after this, that people kind of taking advantage of the system. So it's interesting. It really does feel one part of his PSA, but I think one pushed part of it is pushing the narrative beyond that, really, into something that is actual social commentary, which is interesting for a comic where one of the villains was a talking worm.

Yeah. And again, I think it does the social commentary pretty well. I think the weird part, especially if listeners can't find this, which I'll talk more in just a moment, mhm, about where to find it and why it's now considered imaginary story. But it is that when the US. Army asks Captain Marvel to go track down the who's firing the missiles, it's so that they can return the fire. And then he does ultimately actually bring one of the bombs to the other country and drop it on them. So what's strange about the narrative is that it does have this, like, everyone's just going to start firing on each other. And this is so absurd. The world's going to end if we do this. But then it does also have, like, oh, but it's okay that the US. And the US's hero, Captain Marvel in this case, are going to go just drop a pop on someone else.

I wonder if that's ultimately the message they want. Because in the end, Captain Marvel is left literally as the last man on Earth. So I wonder if in that moment, he was kind of caught up in and he thought, oh, this is a good thing to do. But ultimately, if the comic is saying no, it will cause the destruction of everybody.

I think they're potentially condemning anyone firing at a bombs, but it's certainly a little unclear, at least for the majority of the issue. Um, so the issue, as I mentioned, all of the early Captain Marvel adventures are considered by DC ah. To be Earth s. This has a little bit of the fake imaginary story in it. This is by Fawcett. So this is well before DC. But when DC starts publishing their imaginary stories in trade paperback form, this is actually the first story in the first volume of DC's greatest Imaginary Stories. So they're sort of reclaiming it as that, even though it's arguably not an imaginary story. But I like that they put it in there and, uh, held it up in the canon of DC imaginary stories, which, of course, are the golden and Silver Age pre els world DC things that were happening, and especially like the Superman titles are known for them. And we've covered them before. But this was a very different example of one that's not even technically an example of one. They just reclaimed it afterwards.

Captain, uh, Marvel had dropped a giant squid on everybody. The world would have been saved.

Yeah, I guess it is. Interesting. I wasn't thinking about this in the lineage of Watchmen and what role it might have played. It does. We know from our research the way that Captain Marvel and of course, Marvel Man, Miracle Man are related to each other. So there's a lot of i, uh, don't know if it's even influence it's, like contamination that these characters have with each other. So yeah, I don't even know if it's worth asking if you want to go back to this Earth. Because at this point, if this Earth that's televised were to exist, it's just Captain Marvel on an atomic wasteland. So I don't know that there's many stories there.

I know.

Yeah.

I want to see whatever else Billy was producing in 1946 because it looked probably much better than, uh, all other TV.

It's true. That is true. So I think we can get to our next destination on our journey.

OK, well, let's say the magic word, which is pondering possibilities. Will the future you describe be averted? Averted diverted. And what are we talking about? Ghetto with our pondering possibilities?

Well, since we have the rule that we only look at things that follow the alternate universe, this was actually really easy because our alternate universe was in 1946 before DC even had the character. So I figured instead of going too far into Shazam captain Marvel, since we will explore him again with at ah, ah, a minimum kingdom come and a few other great stories, I figured. Let's just start with DC's first official publication of Shazam.

Yes, that is Shazam, the original Captain Marvel 1 February 1 973 from DC Comics. And there's two stories in there in the beginning and The World Wickedest Plan.

And both are written by Dennis O'Neill penciled, inked and lettered by Ccbeck and edited by Julie Schwartz. And we read it again because it is the first appearance of Shazam in the DC Comics. So it starts off with a very short retelling of the origin, which is pretty much beat for beat. There's a few alterations, like Shazam dies and becomes a ghost before he gives the powers, which I don't think is the order that happens in the 40s, right? Um, no.

Well, he doesn't even become the Obi Wan Kenobi in the original 40s. But that's what we always think of Shazam as at least I do is that kind of spiritual advisor there.

And then there's a few cute nods in the addition, like the person that he sees when he's selling papers he calls Mr. Binder, in honor of Otto Binder. So there's a few cute things in the retelling of the origin but then that segues into the World's Wickedest Plan story, which is also titled Shazam is the Magic Word for the original Captain Marvel. And in this one, they actually try to explain the 20 plus years of reality where Shazam has been missing as if to say that the reality of publication history was the reality of the character. So it's actually a really interesting meta thing. Uh, we talk a lot on the show about meta things, as we did quite a bit in last week's episode. So this is an interesting meta thing that they're trying to do here, where they're trying to hold a real timeline in place in their books. Marvel does that a ton in the into the 80s, especially. But it's interesting to see them try to do that here and try to say, like, hey, this character was gone for 20 years. Here's why. There's actually a story reason why. So they tell us that he was, like, frozen in space from Savannah or something and then broke out.

Yeah. So Sivana had created this thing to freeze Captain Marvel, but Savannah's idiot children push him into the controls. Savannah and his children get frozen as well, and then they, uh, unfroze, blah, blah, blah. Exactly. But it's cool, too, that it is establishing that it's not just Captain Marvel, but it is also his villains, or at least this villain. I would imagine they work out a way that the other villains are also stuck in time, in a way. So that's great too.

Yeah, so it's a fun reentry. What they don't do is they don't, at this point, establish him as part of the DC universe, but he very quickly is. And I'll talk more about that briefly before we move on at the end of this segment. But what are your other thoughts about this issue?

Well, the other amazing thing is that it is drawn by CC. Beck, who did the original comic, the very first appearance back in the don't think he stuck around for super long in this run, from what I was reading. But he did come back to basically reestablish the look there. And as we discussed in our first segment, the look is so important to Captain Marvel. So it's just really cool that this guy, who was obviously so much older, now is coming back and reclaiming the character that was kind of taken from him.

What's cool, too, is I think his style is similar, but it's developed a bit. It actually feels almost very archesque.

It does.

He's yeah, he's it's a lot. Maybe because it's more fully drawn. The expressions on the faces are, I think, what become more Archie esque because he has lots of, like, smiling faces and shocked faces. So there are aspects of it that I think have evolved a bit. But yeah, it definitely has that same look, and in particular because he's the one doing the inking and the lettering, and there's no one credited with colors, but it's surely him because art is just credited to him. So that's why I think it has such a similar feel, which I agree is a really cool thing for someone to do 30 years later. 30 plus years later. Yeah, I don't have anything else to say about this issue. But before we move on again, we're going to surely revisit this character on a future journey because there is a weird Superman battle that comes out the next year where they actually have Superman battle Captain Thunder, which is a pastiche of Shazam. I have no idea why that issue exists, but we need to find out and read it because it's so weird. They even have, like, an acronym for Thunder. Like T-H-U-N-D-E-R. Like, they just copy Shazam into Captain Thunder and have him battle Superman. No idea the origin of that. Then they actually do have an actual encounter between Superman and Shazam not long after. Still in the then, of course, as we've talked about, Shazam has been around, but has not been in a ton of books, especially in the 80s. He was missing from a lot. Uh, Jerry Ordway does a reboot of him in the bit, and that's where you get a lot of the little kid as the grown up stuff going on. And then, of course, you hit kingdom come. And then jeff Johnson's, new 52. Reintroduction. And that's really where he starts to become a central character, I think. So a lot follows this DC intro.

Yeah.

And, uh, the movies. We are recording this before the sequel to Sam comes out. We both saw the first movie and I really enjoyed it. I think it's not great, but it's good. And it was fun and funny. And all the characters and the actors, I think, are charismatic. So I'm looking forward to the second one, though now I have no idea how it's going to fit into this new DCU world.

I enjoyed the first one, too. Uh, but I almost think especially reading this and knowing some of his characters, it would be fun to just have them do something almost not necessarily the same tone, but an animated show in almost the Harley Quinn way, because so much of this character, as we said, is that CC. Beck art style. And then Mark Strong doesn't look like the Silvana of the comics. He's too handsome. He's, um, too normal looking. The Silvana here is this kind of creepy, gremlin kind of man. So I think an animated feature would really be able to get that style out and also maybe bring out some of the absurd tone that is so prevalent in so many of the Captain Marvel comics.

Well, of course, Filmation, the much loved company that created my favorite, Heman and Shira did a Shazam animated series, though I don't think I've ever even seen it. I don't even know how many episodes it lasted. And he's popped up in a lot of the other animated stuff that's happened, some of the animated films and whatnot. And then there were actually some web shorts of him that were in the style that you're describing that were like, kind m of a take on early Popeye, and he's like, super beefy and over muscled, and it's supposed to be comedic, but for kids. So there's, uh, been a few iterations like that, but none that have stuck. I agree. A series would be really fun with this character.

Yeah, and he's, uh, been on screen before, too. In fact, actually, when DC sued Fawcett way back in the 40s, uh, they were also suing Republic Pictures, who was making the serials at the time. So Captain Marvel Shazam has a long history on the screen, and we'll see if he still has a long history after this upcoming movie, given all changes at DC.

Yeah. And then, of course, Marvel won that battle in terms of getting a movie that's called Captain Marvel, but I don't understand this recent report that they might even move away from the use of the name Shazam. I don't see why you would do that, but guess we'll find out.

I would think maybe it is nostalgia from people, because it is a relatively recent change to the Shazam name. And now maybe if the movies are going to go away, they think, well, let's kind of just go back to something that can appease the other, you know, people who always knew him as Captain Marvel. But we can also don't have to call him Captain Marvel. We can just call him the Captain. I don't know. Call him Captain Shazam. That's at least putting the two things together.

Yeah, exactly. The Captain sounds like, um, something nautical. And so I'm not a big fan of that. Although his cape is very nautical looking in those Golden Age adventures. I did notice that because it has that gold rope on it and it has some nautical appeal to it. All right, so I think we've learned that atomic war is bad. And thank you to Billy Basson for helping us understand the depth of how bad it is. And thank you, dear watchers, for listening. That's a wrap. I have been gito.

And I have been the artist formerly known as Rob.

And the reading list is in the show notes. You can find us on all social media at ah, dear Watchers, and leave.

A review wherever you listen to podcasts. We'll be back soon with another trip to the multiverse.

In the meantime, in the words of Hughes, keep pondering the possibilities.