Shazam! The World's Mightiest Mortal - Volume One!

It's one of the grandest ironies in the history of comic books I think that when DC Comics acquired the rights to publish the long-defunct Captain Marvel comic character they were forbidden to use the actual name "Captain Marvel" as the title because Marvel Comics had slipped in and used the name for their "Space-Born Super-Hero". It's ironic because it was DC which had driven Captain Marvel off the stands after years of a lawsuit suggesting the character was a mere copy of Superman. It was a hardball legal maneuver that was merely a ploy to stifle a character was actually in some years outselling DC's Man of Steel. So when the mavens at DC wanted to make hay on the character they were immediately hamstrung. 

Thanks to DC's lawsuit the only time I'd seen Captain Marvel before his debut was in the pages of The Great Comic Book Heroes by Jules Feiffer and then only on a single page. Feiffer wasn't even allowed to reprint a complete story because of the lawsuit. 

 

When DC finally delivered the new comic named Shazam, the old/new hero Captain Marvel was introduced by Superman himself, almost as if to say it's okay now, you can enjoy the adventures of this rip-off of me, all is forgiven. To really make the project jump DC plied original artist C.C. Beck back into comics to take the art chores. Denny O'Neil and Elliot S Maggin wrote the scripts. The art felt much simpler than that of any other DC comic at the time, many of which had taken on more realistic aspects such as the darker Batman books. Beck gave us very simple backgrounds and warm fuzzy characters who almost felt like they'd come from the pages of Peter Rabbit. 

The twenty-year gap was explained away by a single story which said that Billy Batson and the immediate cast of the vintage Fawcett comics had been put into suspended animation by the evil Dr.Sivana who got himself and his kids caught up in it also. This gimmick was good enough and we started having adventures. But it's clear that DC wanted to tap into a younger audience with Shazam, kids perhaps more likely pick up the latest Richie Rich comic than House of Mystery. 

There was a charm to these early stories and Beck's artwork was handsome enough, but it lacked verve. The stories were whimsical, but there was never any real sense of danger for the assembled Marvel Family who took on the likes of the Sivanas and other no-goodniks. 

Shazam was a pretty book, but isolated from the larger DCU it was easy to ignore, as I did originally only picking up the comic with the fourth issue. I remember being entertained by it, but it read quite quickly and the new stories seemed to have less heft than the reprints which DC used to fill out the book from time to time. 

I picked up the comic intermittently, put off by the well-crafted by cutesy covers that suggested this was a mere kiddie book. I was not really grokking the potential glory of the title. 

Characters like Tawky Tawny seemed to be from a different kind of comic book universe, one filled with friendly ghosts.

The title found its real footing with me as a reader when DC's wonderful 100-page format was used for the first time. Here we got some of the new but a great deal more of the vintage Fawcett material. The old stories were quaint but felt more insistent. 

There were some signs of improvement also when the back-ups with Captain Marvel Jr. started with art by others like Dick Giordano and Dave Cockrum who brought a more familiar look to the pages. 

Bob Oksner in particular seemed to have a gift for drawing pretty girls and Mary Marvel was no exception. His art became a highlight of the book. The arrival of E. Nelson Bridwell to help write the book was a harbinger of things to come as well. 

After a year it seemed that C.C. Beck's work was diminishing. I'd learn later that he'd rather disliked his tenure on this new Captain Marvel book, finding the stories somewhat goofy. I  couldn 't disagree with him, but I was also happy to see him drift away from the book to make room for others like Kurt Schffenberger (a Fawcett original) and more work by Oksner and others. 

The title improved immensely when it became a 100-pager full time. The packages were filled with good modern stories and great vintage ones. Each package felt hefty and full of delight. Now it must be said that the new collections do not give the reader any of the original Fawcett material, only the new stuff produced in the early 70's. 

But reading those Bronze Age stories now after many decades, I enjoy them much better than I did at the time. The goofiness doesn't offend my constricted fanboy feelings as it did back in the day, and I'm much more open to a lighter tone than I was back in the day. Even Beck's somewhat childlike approach doesn't brace me as it did back then. These are warm pages with bright happy characters who at the time might not have fitted into a universe filled with Batmen and Man-Bats, but they have a whimsy that still feels fresh. 

Turns out though the books hadn't caught on with my kind and the book fell into a period of decline or reprint before a big change came. That change was brought on by the adventure a new TV show. More on that next time. 

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Favorite Comic Artist Countdown #58 - Bob Oksner!

I have less Bob Oksner art than I'd like. His delightful and often funny material appeared in DC Comics. Oksner won me over with the way he portrayed women, which at once idealized them and made them feel  real. They were gorgeous and yet had that girl next door vibe making them appear accessible to even a comic book nebbish like myself. Oksner work on Shazam, Supergirl, and especially Lois Lane stands out for me. Alas I was not savvy enough to scarf up his work on stuff like Angel and the Ape His Lois Lane covers in particular were clever and sexy and one wondered how they ever got by the Comics Code. It took a blend of skill and wit indeed.

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Burger Time!

This delightful cover for Action Comics by the often overlooked Bob Oksner just makes me laugh. 

There was a whimsy and sheer sense of fun along with the awesome for the Superman covers of this era. Then it got all serious and they became far less interesting. 

The cover also reminded of the vintage video game Burger Time. I'm old and only ever played video games in their natural habitat, the arcade, and I remember this one was a good time.

The sophistication of modern games leaves me cold and in the dust. I'm sure I'd be a total fail trying to revive old reflexes to manage the modern challenges. Leave it to the young I say. 

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Ambush Buggery!

I picked up the Ambush Bug Showcase volume on a whim and promptly set it aside. The artwork by Keith Giffen and Bob Oksner really looked choice and I wanted to savor it a bit. I never read any of these comics (save possibly for the DC Comics Presents issues) when they first appeared, so I came to the Ambush Bug character largely ignorant of its style and content. I knew it was supposed to be funny, but that's about all I knew. I was very impressed.

Now truth told, when Ambush Bug first appeared as a low-level villain in a few issues of Superman's team-up comic he was cleverly written but hardly transformative.

He seemed to be a character in the vein of many of the classic Bat-villains, a killer with a morbid sense of humor. And if he'd stayed like that I suspect he'd be mostly forgotten by now.

But in a trio of appearances in Action Comics, the character blossomed into the antic fourth-wall breaking roustabout who went on to scratch out a few limited series in some of DC's brightest days.

If you haven't read these "adventures" then it's difficult to describe. Keith Giffen and Robert Loren Fleming have so deconstructed the superhero comic book adventure in these stories so as to undermine any attempt by a reader to extract enjoyment on that level. The only thing I can compare these Ambush Bug stories to is Monty Python's Flying Circus. The pacing felt the same and the unpredictability of page after page seemed more than anything to mimic the antic pacing of that classic comedy show.

In the first limited series we meet Ambush Bug's partner Cheeks the Toy Wonder (a plush toy and nominal inspiration for one of the earliest and most entertaining websites devoted to comics that I ever chanced upon) and having him meet up with the likes of Scabbard (from Thriller), Jonni DC (made into a chick--sort of) and most hilariously Darkseid.

What follows in the subsequent specials and limited series is more of the same, more or less. With DC, and superheroes in general getting the satirical crap beat out of them in fine form.

I found Ambush Bug a fun fun read, but for comics fanboys only I suspect.

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Captains Marvel!

Fawcett's Captain Marvel has arguably the most celebrated publishing history of any superhero. Created during the 1940's the character spearheaded Fawcett's comics line-up and proved to be massively successful, more so even than DC's Superman. So DC came knocking with one of their lawsuits and ultimately when comics had dwindled a bit, Fawcett gave up publishing Captain Marvel. Decades later in perhaps the greatest single irony in comics publishing, DC bought those rights and put out their own Captain Marvel comics. To that end Cap found his way into several of DC's over-sized Limited Collector's Editions.

Notice that Oksner kept the clouds from the original Beck source, but they didn't make the final cut.

The art for this issue's cover was done by Bob Oksner, a fact I don't think I realized until I found this original artwork online. I've always loved this pose featuring (impossibly) both the "Big Red Cheese" and his alter ego Billy Batson which was originally done by Beck many years before.

C.C. Beck and Pete Costanza

Oksner's clean effective line and blacks really evoke the simple elegance that defined the best of Captain Marvel as designed by C.C. Beck so many years before for a cover of Whiz Comics.

Cap Meets the Old Red Cheese by Newton and Dan Adkins

DC has seen fit to revise the good Captain several times over the decades, but to my mind the most effective was the transition wrought by Captain Marvel fan supreme and lamented artist Don Newton who was tasked with making the whimsical Beck characters more like his fellow DC Universe counterparts. He did a magnificent job of striking a balance. 

Homage by John Lucas

While Fawcett's Captain Marvel was in legal limbo, Stan Lee and his publisher Martin Goodman stole a march on the field when they put out their own Captain Marvel, this one a space traveler who ends up doing superhero work on the Earth. Going through many transformations, this Captain Marvel was finally found by Jim Starlin who turned him into a relative success but at the same time evoking the classic Captain Marvel. The artwork above is an homage to one of Starlin's earliest issues.

This is an action filled comic which is notable for its stunning craftsmanship by Starlin and for the fact that it features for the first time in full reveal the mad Titan Thanos.

For more work by the artist John Lucas who did the homage above, go here.

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