Product Description

With one magic word -- "Shazam!" -- young Billy Batson became the amazing Captain Marvel, gifted with incredible super-powers and dedicated to stopping evil.

Now, some of the Captain Marvel's greatest stories ever are collected for the first time in this fun, fast-paced graphic novel. Included are the earliest adventures from the early 1940s, powerful tales from the 1950s, Captain Marvel's magical reintroduction into comics in the 1970s and more.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #613218 in Books
• Published on: 2008-02-20
• Released on: 2008-02-20
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

From School Library Journal
The original Captain Marvel, who appears when young Billy Batson says the magic word "Shazam!", was one of comics' earliest superheroes. His 1940 origin tale features very primitive storytelling by today's standards, but its skeletal urban fantasy still strikes a mythic chord, as orphaned newsboy Billy boards a fantastic subway train to meet the ancient wizard Shazam, who in his last act before dying grants Billy great powers. The celebrated whimsy and wonder of the golden age Captain Marvel stories is best represented here by Captain Marvel's battle with planet Earth itself, which has gotten fed up with humans digging in its skin. But that era accounts for barely a third of the book; the motley remainder postdates the character's 1972 revival. A 1974 attempt to replicate the older stories' spirit comes off as silly and charmless. The focus shifts partly to Superman in two stories, one of which actually features not Captain Marvel but a look-alike named Captain Thunder. And surely the compilers could have chosen something better than an inconclusive battle against interstellar hell-raiser Lobo. Not one of DC's stronger "Greatest Stories" volumes but still recommended for larger superhero collections.—S.R.
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Customer Reviews

Men of Steal
Stories in this volume:
1. Origin-Beck/Parker
2. Unititled-Kirby/Simon
3. Trio of Terror-Beck/Binder
4. King Kull and the 7 Sins-Beck/Binder
5. Captain Marvel Battles the World-Beck/Binder
6. Primate Plot-Schaffenberger/Binder
7. World's Wickedest Plan-Beck/O'Neill
8. Make Way for Capt. Thunder-Swan/Maggin-No Capt. Marvel, No Shazam.
9. Evil Return of the Monster Society-Schaffenberger/O'Neill
10. With One Magic Word-Kane/Thomas et al.
11. Where Dreams End-Kitson/Grant-the insultingly bad story
12. A Face Only a Mother Could Love-Krause/Ordway
13. Out of a Dark Cloud-Delaney/Vance

The real and true name of the character depicted on the cover of this book is Captain Marvel, and at his peak his comic books were greatly superior to Superman and outsold the Man of Steel as well. `Captain Marvel Adventures' was the name of his comic book, which is an excellent title. That this book is titled `Shazam,' as must all modern publications featuring the original Captain Marvel be titled, really cheezes me off.

Marvel Comics snatched up the copyrights to the name `Captain Marvel' back in the 1960's when they started publishing a new, unrelated character with the same name. Thus, in 1973, when DC comics revived Captain Marvel after a 20 year publishing hiatus, they could not legally call magazine Captain Marvel, so they called it `Shazam.' `Shazam' is the name of the ancient wizard who gave Captain Marvel his superhuman powers, and `Shazam' is also the magic word that 12-year-old Billy Batson says when he needs to summon the magic forces and turn into the Captain Marvel, the World's Mightiest Mortal.

Aside from the fact that the phrase Captain Marvel is wonderful to read and say, at once bright and exciting, and almost musical, the unfortunate consequence of publishing Capt. Marvel for 35 years under the title `Shazam' has been that many people erroneously call this character `Shazam.'

The confusion about the character's name mirrors the confusion of the current publisher, DC comics, regarding the identity and personality of this once great hero. Captain Marvel was initially published in 1940, 2 years after Superman, by Fawcett Comics, a potential rival of Superman's publisher, DC comics. DC saw Captain Marvel as unwelcome competition for Superman, and spent the next 12 or so years trying to sue Captain Marvel out of existence, by any means possible.

DC's lawyers finally prevailed, and in early 1954, the last original Capt. Marvel comic was published. This was a Crime Against Art. Although his first couple years were not spectacular, from about 1943 until the bitter end, Captain Marvel and related titles were pure comics gold. These classic years were characterized by gorgeous art that was deceptively cartoonish, and by highly inventive stories that combined a unique whimsy with clever science fiction elements. The greatest artists of this period were C.C. Beck, Mac Raboy, Pete Costanza, Kurt Schaffenberger, Jack Binder, Marc Swayze and Bud Thompson; the greatest writer being Otto Binder. Fawcett Comics tended to give the creators better pay and treatment than DC comics did.

This book has six stories from this period, the Fawcett period, which are the best six stories in this book. These stories are the reason I gave this book a 3-star rating instead of lower. They are good stories and certainly suitable to be reprinted, but coming from such a fertile and imaginative time, IMO there are a few better ones that could have been included.

The Fawcett stories include an early, uncredited, Kirby-illustrated tale. This story is not spectacular in any way, and it does not feature the bombastic 3-D style of illustation that Jack Kirby would employ a year later with Captain America. This seems to be included simply so that DC could include Kirby's name on the publicity materials- in other words, to exploit Kirby.

The other Fawcett stories are better, and feature some of C.C. Beck's and Kurt Schaffenberger's finest work, but most of these I have seen before in the various reprint collections DC published in the 1970's. There are no stories representing Pete Costanza's or Mac Rayboy's art, glaring ommissions indeed.

One of the best all time Beck/Binder stories, 'Captain Marvel Battles the World,' is thankfully included (having been already reprinted once, in a tabloid size edition in the 70's). Besides being a good story in its own right, it features the planet earth reacting to excessive oil drilling by heating up the atmosphere so as to drive humans to extinction. Holy Global Warming! The wonderful mind of Otto Binder could be insightful to the point of near-prophecy.

Nineteen years after suing Capt. Marvel into non-existence, in an act of supreme chutzpah, DC comics tried to put him to work for them. (Hence the title of this review.) But DC's lawyers had done their work too well. Licensed items like buttons, toys, and media (`The Good Humor Man,' a 1950 film which mentions Capt. Marvel, was effectively consigned to oblivion), which might have kept Capt. Marvel's memory alive, had all been swept away.

Besides the good Captain's purging from pop culture history, too many years had passed, too many things had changed. DC hired the original artist C.C. Beck, but his work was not as spectacular as it had been in the 40's and 50's, and he left after a few issues.

Otto Binder, who had been the glue keeping the disparate and paradoxical elements of the Captain Marvel universe together, died in late 1974 and was not able to contribute to Capt. Marvel's revival.

DC did have some good writers and artists at this time, including Kurt Schaffenberger, and for about 5 years published Captain Marvel, under the title `Shazam,' in a style that imitated Cap's original whimsical science fiction mix. The results of this attempt at imitation were uneven, some good, some not so much. This collection features 2 stories from this period, and they are pretty good, especially Denny O'Neill and Kurt Schaffenberger's quasi-revival of the `Monster Society.' Sales of this magazine, titled `Shazam,' fell until it was cancelled in 1978.

There is bizarre DC story from this period called 'Make Way for Captain Thunder.' It is not even a real Capt. Marvel story, instead featuring Superman battling a faux-Capt. Marvel. This story was published 1st in 1974 and has been anthologized several times already. There is simply no aesthetic reason to publish this story again, as even when it was originally published it was simply a filler to appease fans until such time as Supes and Cap could really meet. This story is a waste of time. The writer of this tale, the usually-excellent Elliot S! Maggin, did a number of real Capt. Marvel stories after this that were much better. This story belongs in a Superman anthology.

Since the early 70's, DC Comics has tried numerous times to reinvent Capt. Marvel, with mixed results. Virtuoso artist Don Newton, one of the great unsung heroes of comics, along with scripter and uber-fan E. Nelson Bridwell, gave Cap and Family a dynamic makeover in the late 70's, but none of those stories is in this volume. Considering the extremely high quality of these stories and the fact that this team produced 31 installments of our hero's adventures, I consider this to be another glaring ommission. Before his Shazam! assignment, Newton also did a lot of great Capt. Marvel fan art, and he deseves much more recognition. These stories should be republished in TPB form.

Another terrific version post-Fawcett Capt. Marvel was created by Jerry Ordway, a truly excellent artist, published under the title `Power of Shazam!' in the mid 1990's. Only one story from that era is included in this volume. Like Newton, Ordway's work should be reprinted in TPB form.

The remaining stories in this book vary in tone and quality. There is an absolutely wretched vignette ('Where Dreams End') from the an early 1990's series called 'LEGION' that is absolutely the dumbest and most pointless comic story I have ever read anywhere. Once more, shame on you, DC, for wasting paper on this garbage.

I strongly suspect DC picked a lot of the material for this volume based on their perception of name-recognition artists. DC seems to believe that the names of certain artists equal high sales, and to heck with the actual merits of the work itself.

The bitter truth of this whole saga is that Capt. Marvel's most glorious days were all prior to his cancellation in 1954. My real criticism of this book is that if DC really wanted to do a `Greatest Stories' volume for this character, they would stick to the Fawcett years and forget the later stuff. You could fill many, many, many volumes with the Fawcett material and still have lots left over. (Jerry Ordway's excellent series merits anthologizing, but it is sufficiently different in tone to the original Fawcetts so as to be marketed under a slightly different banner.)

Back in the 1970's, DC comics did reprint a lot of the old stories in the regularly published `Shazam' magazine and various special editions as well. If you have any of those reprints, hold onto them. As you can see with this volume, DC's current practice is to stingily dole out the Fawcett era reprints in small doses, all the while revamping Capt. Marvel every year or two in the hopes that lightning will strike twice (pun intended).

Capt. Marvel is a moral character, created to live in a moral universe. Perhaps 54 years ago when DC comics, showing their superiority in might over right, set Karma into motion. Perhaps that is why they have not been able to succeed with Capt. Marvel. If this is a moral universe, and if there is such a force as Karma, DC is certainly not serving any greater good by holding back the treasure trove of Fawcett Comics.

Just a few years back, DC published a 'Shazam Family Annual' for $6, and it had 4 classic Fawcett stories. I picked up a used, mint condition copy last year for only a buck. So that was a better buy than this collection. And back in the 70's, DC published a collection called 'Shazam: From the Forties to the Seventies,' and it was much, much better than this volume (if you can find a copy under $20, you ought to scoop it up).

The good news is that if you do a little searching, you can find many of the classic Fawcett Capt. Marvel stories in full color, published on the internet. I still prefer to have this material on paper, to read on the bus or at the beach, but DC is pushing me and others directly into cyberspace.

Shazam The Greatest Stories Ever Told
An awesome book that reprints the original stories from the comic book series of 1939. I can very highly recommend this as an inexpensive way to recapture the Captain Marvel "Shazam" memories.