Captain Marvel
17 years ago - Billy Batson is born.
11 years ago - 6-year-old Billy's parents are killed by Theo Adam. He continually runs away from different orphanages, wanting to instead be on his own.
8 years ago - 9-year-old Billy is placed in a new foster home where he first meets his new foster siblings, Freddy Freeman & Mary Bromfield, as well as their caretaker, Uncle Dudley. At first they irritate him, but they soon come to trust and look out for each other. Billy is guided to the Wizard Shazam by his father's ghost, becomes the Wizard's champion Captain Marvel, regularly battling Black Adam as Thaddeus Sivana continually plays them against each other.
7 years ago - 10-year-old Billy becomes controlled by Circe when she usurps the powers of several Gods during the Godwar. He fights the Yorba god Shango, who holds his own until Kent Nelson & Diana Prince are able to call Manitou Raven & Dawn from the Stony Path to work the magic to free him outside the touch of the Gods.
6 years ago - 11-year-old Billy fights Timothy Karnes, Doctor Sivana's creation Sabbac. Mary Bromfield & Freddy Freeman first learn that he is Captain Marvel. They each gain a share of Billy's powers, allowing them to temporarily become Mary & Freddy Marvel.
5 years ago - 12-year-old Billy has to fight monsters unleashed from the labs of Thaddeus Sivana by Magnificus Sivana while under the control of Mister Mind, who grows to monster size and attacks the city. Billy stops him using Sivana's experiments, & imprisons him in the Rock of Eternity.
4 years ago - 13-year-old Billy joins the Justice League. Uncle Dudley learns that he is Captain Marvel, and becomes an even more important mentor and role model.
3 years ago - 14-year-old Billy's age is discovered during the White Martian invasion & he is removed from the Justice League.
2 years ago - 15-year-old Billy Batson is attacked by Magnificus Sivana, Thaddeus Sivana Jr & Georgia Sivana when they are empowered by Thaddeus Sivana's artificial Rock of Eternity. He is helped by Mary Bromfield & Freddy Freeman to trick them into saying his name to lose their powers. CC Dudley has a chance to share a fraction of his power but declines. Billy is later invited to join the Justice Society.
Captain Marvel is one of the longest lasting and most popular superheroes ever, but his influence has largely stayed on the comic page. He's made a few forays into wider media, including a few classic serials, a 70's live-action TV series, but for the most part you have to be pretty steeped in comic lore to really see just how hugely influential this character is. There are countless characters that have attempted to recreate the success of Superman, but Captain Marvel is arguably the only one to ever actually improve on it.
Captain Marvel actually returned to the popular media recently when the movie Shazam hit theaters, which I thought was absolutely fantastic. It was actually heavily influenced by more modern takes on the character, so it falls to us to find just the right balance between these modern stories and the classic comics that are so beloved.
Captain Marvel actually returned to the popular media recently when the movie Shazam hit theaters, which I thought was absolutely fantastic. It was actually heavily influenced by more modern takes on the character, so it falls to us to find just the right balance between these modern stories and the classic comics that are so beloved.
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Captain Marvel's Comic HistoryCaptain Marvel was first published in Thrill Comics #1 in 1940, and 8-page black and white publication by the company Fawcett Comics. This book would become Whiz Comics, where Captain Marvel became a regular cover feature, starring in hundreds of issues, crossing over into spinoff books like Captain Marvel Adventures and The Marvel Family. Captain Marvel was incredibly popular; he took the child's power fantasy of Superman and managed to make it even more accessible to the children who read the book by making the hero an actual child himself. Young BIlly Batson would speak a magic word and become an adult hero in the vein of Superman. The concept was simple but accessible in a way that would permeate much of Fawcett Comics, and for a time, Captain Marvel was actually outselling Superman. DC responded by suing Fawcett comics for copyright infringement... which... I mean... yea, kind of.
Losing it's most popular character and the overall downfall of superhero comics in general led to the end of Fawcett Comics in the fifties. There were a few weird non-cannon publications that attempted to reuse the concept (including the legendary series Miracleman... please read it, it's amazing), but Captain Marvel was essentially gone from comics. |
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The return of superhero comics in the 60's meant that major publishers were looking for new properties. Fawcett still couldn't publish Captain Marvel comics because of the original court case, so instead they agreed to licence their characters to DC. Captain Marvel and his supporting characters all started to appear in their own series published by DC in the early seventies, as well as in his own live action television series. Like a lot of the properties acquired across this era, they existed within their own corner of the DC multiverse, where several different series were created and well received.
After the Crisis of Infinite Earths Captain Marvel became a regular part of the mainstream DC universe. Jerry Ordway created the very popular series Powers of Shazam in the 90's that successfully redefined the character within the regular timeline, and of course the character played a major role in Kingdom Come, the hugely influential Elseworlds miniseries by legendary artist and outspoken Captain Marvel fanboy Alex Ross. This was followed by his part in the fantastic Justice Society series by Geoff Johns. After DC reset it's timeline in the New 52, Billy Batson got his own backup story in the Justice League series. Some new ideas were introduced, including his redefined Marvel Family, and while the comic read as a little needlessly grimdark, it served as the inspiration for the fantastic 2019 movie. For a character that's been appearing in a variety of comic publications and media for over eighty years, it's wild that he's now more popular than he's ever been. |
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Captain Marvel V ShazamWhen Captain Marvel returned to publication by DC in 1973, all of a sudden there was a competing comic company called Marvel Comics that had a character with the same name that had been in publication since 1967. Legally, DC had the rights to use the character name, but didn't have the right to use Captain Marvel as the book title. The solution was to call the book Shazam, after his iconic magic word. These legal shenanigans meant that Marvel Comics had to constantly have a book in publication called Captain Marvel to retain those rights, even when they didn't have a popular version of the character in their lineup.
Fast forward to now: Marvel has a hugely popular version of Captain Marvel now in Carol Danvers. It's decided, when redefining BIlly Batson's story for the new 52 that they would just abandon the name completely and the character would be called Shazam. Thankfully, we don't have to worry about any of that. Billy Batson is Captain Marvel, period. The idea that he would use, as his name, the magic word that turns him into a kid... that's dumb. I'm sorry. |
Our Captain Marvel StoryThere are literal mountains of stories to include for Captain Marvel, and while they're all a lot of fun to go back and read, you do find that a lot of it is just repeating certain story beats over and over. His origin has been rewritten for different continuities a few different times, and each time we get to watch him rediscover himself and his world again as if it was the first time. This is a great example of why making a single timeline is a lot of fun, because we get to look over all the different takes on this story and work out a version that we like the most.
In this case, we actually do like a lot about the New 52 version of his story. Billy Batson has always been an orphan, sometimes depicted as homeless, sometimes he seems to be more like an emancipated minor or something (Golden Age comics are weird), but the modern comics make him a foster kid, and that immediately humanizes his story in a way that feels relevant and satisfying. It also goes a long way to explain his relationship with several of his long-time supporting cast, because they're simply other foster kids in the same home. We've done a little work to add a few classic characters into the mix as well, like Uncle Dudley. Beyond this, we often define our timeline by moving the characters into different superhero teams, because it gives us a framework for where the characters are in their life and what they're doing. For us, that means a brief membership in the Justice League before he's invited to join the Modern Justice Society. |
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The Marvel FamilyOtto Binder, who wrote a lot of the early Captain Marvel stories, is the person perhaps most responsible for the idea of giving a single superhero a whole group of spin-off characters with similar powers. Later, when he was brought in by DC to write Superman, he was responsible for creating Supergirl and several of the Super-Animals. He did this first, however, with the Marvel Family. He created characters like Mary Freeman's "Mary Marvel", Freddy Freeman's "Captain Marvel Jr", both of whom became regular parts of the Marvel story when it joined the DC multiverse. There were, of course lots of other lesser known members like Tawky-Tawny and Hoppy (an anthropomorphic tiger & rabbit, respectively), the Lieutenant Marvels (just three other kids named Billy) and Uncle Dudley (a dude who was just faking having powers).
In the New 52 rewrite of Billy's story he's given a wider cast of fellow foster kids, each of which also gets their own version of his powers. These are the characters we see in the movie, and they are charming as heck. The thing is; we work pretty hard here to make sure that the heroes in our timeline have a specific role to fill and aren't just here to be here. To that end, we're limiting the powers, at least in general, just to BIlly. Mary and Freddy will still be there and will get their own powers briefly, but the story needs to remain centered, at least for the most part, on Billy. |
Captain Marvel's CostumeI'm starting to feel like I'm repeating myself a bit here, because for most of this page I'm saying over and over that what was done with Billy Batson in the New 52 and in the following live action movie is all pretty good, but we're just more interested in what came before. This is probably because we were all fans of him before they did any revisions; while I really do appreciate the new take and consider it a very faithful and modern retelling of a classic story, for me personally, I don't necessarily need this story to change as much, I was always a fan of it.
This, obviously, applies to his costume as well. His modern appearance is of course very cool. He has a billowing cape with an attached hood, and a massive glowing and crackling lightning bolt logo on his chest. It's all very exciting and fits with the moden comic aesthetic.. There's just no improving on the classic, though. No one wears a half-cape like Captain Marvel. That double-breasted button on his chest is amazing. The belt-sash communicates so much about the magical nature of his character. This is pretty much perfect. |
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Captain Marvel's FutureAs we leave our timeline, Captain Marvel is one of the young new heroes to join the new Justice Society. The innovation of bringing him into the team during the Geoff Johns run was just fantastic. This is how I was introduced to the character, so I'm always going to see him through that lense and it just works.
We've developed the idea that the most recent incarnation of the Justice Society under new chairperson Powergirl is structured around embracing promising young heroes to give them a place to work alongside experienced veterans. Captain Marvel fits this dynamic so well because weirdly, he's kind of both? He's one of the longest, most time-tested superhero legacies in comics, but he's also still a teenager. If you're going to use Captain Marvel in a way that tells his story properly, then he actually needs to be a relatively recent addition to our timeline. Putting him into the Society just feels like the best way to honor his legacy while also giving him the space that his actual characterization requires. There are some fantastic takes on what would happen once BIlly grows up, but they tend to be pretty terrifying ones like Kingdom Come, or even more terrifying ones like Miracleman. At this point it's actually more cutting edge to acknowledge that he's a good kid who found a loving foster home and who has access to true wisdom. The man that Billy will grow up to be will be a truly good person, and I would love to see THAT story take shape. |
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