Musing about the Original Captain Marvel

 

Always adored the original Captain Marvel, from Fawcett Comics, depending on the skillful execution of the treatment. There's just something fundamentally appealing to me about a comic character steeped in magic. The Big Red Cheese is now more widely known as Shazam (long story, worth watching a Youtube show such as Casually Comics). This character's heartily 1940's pulp-era vibe also helps cement my appreciation of the character. With a magic word, an orphan boy transforms into an adult hero with obvious pulp-cinema, matinee-idol looks and inspiration.

Earlier versions separated the boy and man characters; with CM as a separate heroic identity from ... somewhere? Likely hanging around  the Rock of Eternity, waiting on-call? The trend the past few decades has been to have orphan Billy Batson in charge when he is Captain Marvel as well.

Some more strident fans of other flagship DC Comics superheroes seem to often dislike CM. I have wondered whether if it is because of the obvious parallels to Superman (also a long story, which gets down into the weeds if you like that sort of thing) or simply that Captain Marvel's superpowers are explained as magical,  and not with the at-best pseudo scientific theory (which is almost joyously risible) that allows for Superman to fly, etc. In Captain Marvel's adventures, also, magic allows for, well, anything to happen, which can get ... delightfully bonkers, actually.  Other readers perhaps need to have better rules, however arbitrary, about knowing where the walls are?

I also find fascination in artists who genuflect over such a character throughout their careers, because obviously that archetypal hero speaks to something in them. Case in point? Brilliant comics-famous artist Jerry Ordway, whose pencils—and colouring and painting!—are exemplified above and below. 

After years of fans demanding it, DC reprinted for the first time the first arc of Ordway's and Peter Krause's The Power of Shazam! series along with Ordway's The Power of Shazam! graphic novel that kicked the series off in this hardcover, The Power of Shazam! Book One: In the Beginning. 

In The Power of Shazam! graphic novel Ordway went all-in with a  glorious retro, pulpy, Raiders of the Lost Arc-colour palette, which he painstakingly illustrated over more than a year. 

For the following monthly series, Ordway modernized and updated the hero's origins for the late 1980's, keeping it in line with Legends, the 1987 six-issue limited series that rebooted the DC Universe. He stuck to painting the covers at a reduced rate, while Krause pencilled the interiors.

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From The Power of Shazam! graphic novel