Tag Archives | shazam

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Easter with The Big Red Cheese

Most little kids related Easter with the Easter Bunny. For me, and still to this day, Easter makes me think of a different jovial character. Captain Marvel. When I was little, many Easters ago, I woke up one Easter morning to see my Easter Basket, full of the usual fare: chocolate bunnies, peanut butter eggs, […]

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The Christmas We Get We Deserve

EDITOR’S NOTE: It’s a holiday tradition, and one that I’m not quite ready to part with. Let’s celebrate by running one of my favorite COMICS 101 columns of all time, a Column from Christmas Past from 2003. After all, to quote Crow T. Robot, “There’s no tradition like a new tradition.” So, grab a seat […]

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Extended (Marvel) Family

As Fawcett’s Captain Marvel continued to grow in popularity over the 1940s, his cast of characters grew along with it, well past the core Marvel Family of Cap, Captain Marvel Junior and Mary Marvel. Here are a few other very frequently appearing friends of the Big Red Cheese: Among the first were the Three Lieutenant […]

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The Big Red Cheese on the Silver Screen

Fawcett’s Captain Marvel first leapt off the printed page and into theatres in 1941, with the 12-chapter Republic serial The Adventures of Captain Marvel, starring Tom Tyler as Captain Marvel and Frank Coghlan Jr. as Billy Batson. It’s pretty faithful to the basics of the Captain Marvel mythos, even starting off with Billy’s visit to […]

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Same Magic Word, New Initials

By 1942, Fawcett had really begun to realize the money machine they had on their hands with the Captain Marvel franchise. And so, only a year after they had branched out with Captain Marvel Junior, the Marvel Family saw the introduction of a new member, in the form of Mary Marvel, first appearing in Captain […]

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With Two Magic Words

After two years of smashing success with their Captain Marvel character, Fawcett Comics decided the time was right to expand the franchise and give the Big Red Cheese a youthful sidekick, as was the popular trend at the time (what with your Robins and Buckys and Speedys and Sandys and such). However, the way Fawcett […]

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With One Magic Word…

I’ve always maintained that the best superheroes have the best origin stories, and the best origin stories are the simplest. With that in mind, let’s look at the origin of the one true Captain Marvel (known to most of you New 52 slackers as just “Shazam”), as presented by writer Bill Parker and artist Charles […]

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Welcoming the Future, Treasuring the Past.