Amphibian goddesses, talking vegetables, and nuclear bugs, oh my! The Shazam! comic books have had quite a bizarre and colorful history.
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00:00Amphibian goddesses, talking vegetables, and nuclear bugs, oh my! The Shazam comic books
00:05have had quite a bizarre and colorful history. Back in the 1940s, comic book stories rarely
00:11took up more than 10 pages, and serials were even rarer. But then there was the two-year
00:16marathon Monster Society of Evil arc by Otto Binder and C.C. Beck in Captain Marvel Adventures
00:2222 through 46. The Monster Society is an interplanetary cabal run by an unseen mastermind named Mr.
00:30Mind. He has the entire resources of the Axis powers at his disposal. Even Hitler himself
00:35happily takes orders. After months of nearly dying at Mr. Mind's hands, Captain Marvel
00:41finds out that he's actually a caterpillar with cute little glasses. But this doesn't
00:45make him any less of a threat, as Mr. Mind turns the Great Wall of China into a giant
00:51shield for the invading Japanese army. This is a story so jam-packed that it introduces
00:56two unrelated underground civilizations in one five-page chapter. Other highlights include
01:03Mr. Mind firing so many German cannons it knocks the Earth out of orbit and invading
01:08Scotland in an island-shaped battleship, as well as Captain Marvel on the back of an unfrozen
01:14mammoth.
01:15Captain Marvel is many things, but we never expected Dirty Scab to be part of his resume.
01:21But in Captain Marvel and the Revolt of the Comics in Captain Marvel Adventures 22, that's
01:26pretty much exactly what he is. Apparently, in the Captain Marvel universe, comics heroes
01:32write and draw their own stories. That becomes a problem when stand-ins for familiar characters
01:37all walk out, including Popeye and Flash Gordon. There's also a version of Batman who wears
01:42a pair of baseball bats and has an actual robin for his sidekick.
01:47"...holy headache!"
01:48Whatever their grievances might be, Captain Marvel puts them back to work, whether by
01:52appealing to their patriotism or by rescuing his fellow superheroes from a danger even
01:57they can't handle — a mob at the department store.
02:01Some of the over-the-top flag-waving in wartime comics can seem a little ridiculous, but that's
02:06not true for every story. Some of them are very ridiculous. For instance, there's Captain
02:12Marvel Visits Portland, Oregon, or Knighthood Flowers Again in Captain Marvel Adventures
02:1729. Cap is promoting a scrap metal drive for the war effort when he meets with a modern-day
02:22Don Quixote named Richard Chickenheart. Chickenheart's obsession with artifacts has led him to regular
02:27spells in which he thinks he's a medieval knight. To keep him out of trouble, Billy
02:32Batson tags along as his page boy in between turning into Captain Marvel so that he can
02:37intervene when Chickenheart becomes violent.
02:39Before his mental breakdown, Chickenheart is about to melt down his priceless collection
02:43of unique historical treasures to make into guns and tanks. All his troubles turn out
02:48to be the fault of another collector named Bart Black, who wants to buy Chickenheart's
02:52collection for $5,000, which somehow makes him the bad guy. But nobody seems to realize
02:58that all that money could pay for a lot more military gear than anyone could ever get from
03:02a couple pounds of armor.
03:04In Captain Marvel's comics, natural phenomena are the work of various whimsical characters.
03:09Captain Marvel enforces the law of gravity in Captain Marvel Adventures 31, adds the
03:15Council of Gods to the series' improvised pantheon, and they proceed to repeal — you
03:20guessed it — the law of gravity. Predictably, this is bad news back on Earth, where Captain
03:25Marvel zips around the city keeping people from floating off into space. Meanwhile, some
03:29gangsters take advantage of the situation by wearing spiked shoes and towing off a safe
03:34like a balloon. Once he's dispatched them, Captain Marvel chases the problem back to
03:38the council but gets stuck in the waiting room, along with a two-headed toad alien who
03:43lets him know he could be waiting for eternity. Fortunately, he has connections, since the
03:48wizard Shazam used to be on the council, and so he manages to successfully convince the
03:52council to put the law of gravity back on the books.
03:55I can fly!
04:00Captain Marvel's adventures are full of dozens of mad scientists with elaborate schemes,
04:06but Dr. Groon from Captain Marvel Adventures number 49 goes above and beyond. In the first
04:12panel of Captain Marvel and the Unknown Killer, Groon's medical colleagues are already banning
04:17him from his brain transplantation experiments. But that night, he seemingly returns to attack
04:22one of the doctors who denounced him before Captain Marvel intervenes. As Groon tries
04:27to take out the next man on his hit list, Cap is shocked to discover he's a gorilla
04:32in disguise. You'd think the hairy arms and legs and the cheap plastic mask that doesn't
04:38even cover his whole face would have been a tip-off. The gorilla explains that he's
04:42the fruit of Groon's experiments, and that he killed the doctor and decided he might
04:46as well kill some more doctors while he's at it. After the ape escapes to kill again,
04:51Captain Marvel takes another mask off him, and it turns out that the gorilla is Dr. Groon
04:56after all. Crime is foiled, justice triumphs, and we're all left confused.
05:02I'm confused.
05:05In Captain Marvel and His Loneliest Stay from Captain Marvel Adventures number 49, Billy
05:10Batson overhears a broadcast from the lone attendant of an iceberg monitoring station
05:14in Greenland announcing that he's going to quit before cabin fever sets in. So Billy
05:18decides that Captain Marvel shall keep it warm himself. As it turns out, the stamina
05:23of Atlas doesn't extend to boredom, and it's only a few hours before Cap starts climbing
05:28up the walls. After 892 games of solitaire, he gets fed up enough to go hunting for someone
05:33to talk to. That leads us to the hilarious image of Captain Marvel chatting with a penguin
05:39until it eventually covers its ears with its little flippers. The absurdity escalates as
05:44Captain Marvel decides to train penguins to dance, and a deer to pull them in a sleigh,
05:49and also to dress up a walrus as a clown.
05:51But then a polar bear interrupts the proceedings, though, after a quick beatdown, it joins the
05:56circus as well. Fortunately, no one witnesses this spectacular breakdown except the old
06:02attendant, who happily takes his job back now that he has the circus to keep his mind
06:07off the solitude.
06:08In Captain Marvel and the Land of Surrealism, from Captain Marvel Adventures number 80,
06:13Billy covers an art show by surrealist painter Leonardo Vinci. Vinci refuses a prize for
06:18imaginative art because he claims he drew it all from life. Nobody believes him, but
06:23Billy's at least intrigued enough to drive with Vinci to the Goofy Grotto, where all
06:28the cymbal plants and eyeball flowers from the paintings actually do exist. Cap then
06:34has to intervene when one of the creatures traps Vinci to paint him.
06:38The Captain Marvel team return to this well four issues later, with Captain Marvel and
06:42the Surrealist Imp. This time, the Land of Surrealism comes to Earth, and artistic inspiration
06:48comes from a little cucumber-headed imp in a bathrobe. He's bored with all the dull paintings
06:53he has to send down while all the best surrealist ideas go unused. So instead of sending painter
06:59Hans Krendler what he wanted, he emerges from Krendler's canvas to inspire more surrealist
07:04paintings by turning the real world surreal.
07:08First he redecorates Krendler's apartment with a dresser sporting human hair and ears
07:12and tongues for drawer handles. The prank nearly turns deadly when he twists the highway
07:18into a pretzel, but then, of course, Captain Marvel successfully intervenes.
07:23"...What the hell was that?"
07:25In Marvel Family Number 20, Captain Marvel and the Mistake of Father Time delivers exactly
07:31what it promises when the mystical old man accidentally leaves his hourglass upside down
07:36during a nap on a cloud. Back on Earth, Captain Marvel is musing on his failure to save a
07:41crashed pilot because he was too busy with a house fire. This could have easily been
07:45a cheap gimmick, but C.C. Beck's handling of it seems more like the work of an avant-garde
07:49artist rather than a superhero adventure. Most of Cap's adventures are as talky as an
07:55episode of Seinfeld, but Beck makes the absurdity of the situation twice as shocking by playing
08:00it totally straight. Some scenes, like the plane flying backward, play out in eerie silence.
08:06It all adds up to one of the most memorable stories from any comic of the era.
08:11"...Well, good luck with all that."
08:16Captain Marvel and the Dinosaur Dilemma in Captain Marvel Adventures Number 123 begins
08:21with Billy's boss Sterling Morris showing up to work with a baby dinosaur on a leash.
08:26Dino makes himself a nuisance in record time, tackling Billy and jumping out the window.
08:31Billy turns into Captain Marvel and rescues him, and then he investigates how Sterling
08:35found a dinosaur a couple million years past its sell-by date. He finds a pet shop on the
08:40corner offering a special on baby dinosaurs and traces them to a local farmer who found
08:45the eggs preserved in a frozen cave. For whatever reason, he decided nobody needed
08:50to know about the scientific discovery of the century except some guy who sells dog
08:55food.
08:56But that's the least of Captain Marvel's worries, since all the cute little baby dinos quickly
09:00grow up and become a little too destructive. Cap pens them in and finally gets a scientist
09:06to study them, but that doesn't last long once Dino breaks clean through the fence.
09:11Cap eventually decides to load all of the dinos in a giant, bullet-shaped capsule, fly
09:15it to the wizard's home on the Rock of Eternity at the nexus of space and time, and then send
09:20them back to their natural time period.
09:23In the world of Captain Marvel, even something as abstract as instincts can make for concrete
09:28sparring partners. In Captain Marvel Battles the Discarded Instincts from Captain Marvel
09:33Adventures Number 124, a little old man discards his bad instincts not through self-discipline,
09:39but by locking them in a chest. When his wife throws it out and Sterling Morris finds
09:44it at the flea market, the instincts re-emerge in smoky trails that look like ghost versions
09:49of the Seven Dwarfs.
09:51Even fairy tale logic doesn't quite cover just why the little old man seems to have
09:55only discarded animal instincts. To wit, Captain Marvel spends most of the story fighting off
10:00the instinct of hibernation. Morris thinks he can fly once he gets the instinct of migration,
10:07and the Moon Baying Instinct makes some poor opera singer howl like a wolf on live TV.
10:12Plus, an electrician catches the Lemming Instinct, which makes lemmings all swim out into the
10:17ocean to die. But at least that gives us the undeniably awesome image of Cap punching a
10:23shark so hard that it goes flying backward.
10:26Fortunately, Cap's life-saving instinct is strong enough to beat out the hibernation
10:31instinct, and the little old man whistles all the instincts back into the chest.
10:37Captain Marvel Adventures number 133 gives us Captain Marvel and the Dog Dilemma, in
10:42which the title character doesn't even appear until a third of the way through. Instead,
10:46the story follows hardworking groundskeeper Herman Claude, whose duties include walking
10:51his boss's poodle, Poopsie. He starts thinking about how much easier Poopsie's life is, and
10:56somehow manages to whip up an ego-exchanging machine right then and there. We don't get
11:01much of an explanation for how this is possible, but at least C.C. Beck has some fun designing
11:06the device as Herman and Poopsie are wired up to metal caps made from a coffee container
11:11and a dog food can.
11:13Captain Marvel gets involved when Billy spots a grown man barking and chasing a cat on all
11:18fours. Meanwhile, Herman realizes how half-baked his idea was when his new owner expects him
11:24to eat dog food and do tricks, and then spanks him when he doesn't. After a day of every
11:29indignity a dog can experience, Herman manages to tell Captain Marvel the truth.
11:34So Cap jams the cans back on Herman and Poopsie's heads, and everything goes back to what passes
11:41for normal in these comics.
11:43Most of these stories come from the post-war era, and this one tackles the biggest anxiety
11:49of the era — nuclear war. In Captain Marvel Battles the Bug Bombs, from Whiz Comics number
11:55150, Billy Batson tours an atomic power plant and quizzes them on their vulnerability to
12:00espionage. His guide assures him that it's airtight, except for some ants that interrupt
12:06their lunch. Alas, it turns out that those ants are little spies when the plant's radar
12:10spots the latest of several unexplained nuclear explosions in the Amazon.
12:15Captain Marvel flies down to investigate and discovers a raiding party of wasps carrying
12:20cute little wasp-sized bombs. He also finds an enormous anthill and its ruler, an enormous
12:26ant. It turns out that he grew with the help of scientific hormones. That doesn't really
12:30explain much of anything, let alone why he's wearing what appears to be a baby blue Christmas
12:35Cracker crown and matching boots.
12:37Apparently, the solution to bug war is bug genocide, since Cap sets off a chain reaction
12:42by punching a wasp into the atomic pile that nukes both the wasp and ant armies out of
12:47existence.
12:49To be an underdog is to fight against the entire world, and that was literally true
12:59for Captain Marvel. Captain Marvel Battles the World, from Captain Marvel Adventures
13:03number 148, ditches the usual third-person omniscient narrator so that Earth can speak
13:08for itself about his annoyance with humans always digging into his skin for oil and metal.
13:14Our planet decides it's had enough and removes all the clouds to burn humanity off. All the
13:20strength of Hercules can't stand up against a planet, so Captain Marvel has to lean on
13:25the wisdom of Solomon and outsmart Earth. First, he drops an ice asteroid into the atmosphere
13:31to restore the clouds. Then, when Earth starts knocking over buildings with the roar of icebergs
13:36grinding together, Cap plugs them up with a couple of tons of felt. Finally, when Earth
13:41tries to split the Americas, Cap lifts all of South America like a continent-sized mattress
13:47and flies it back into place before gluing it together with lava. Earth gets ready to
13:52make the fight even meaner when a giant comet comes hurtling along, but Cap proves that
13:57Earth needs humans as much as they need it by annihilating the comet with a block of
14:01plutonium.
14:02In 1973, DC struck a deal with Fawcett to produce new Captain Marvel comics, and a few
14:08years later, they bought the characters outright. DC pulled in top talent for Shazam, with C.C.
14:14Peck returning for the first few issues, along with an A-list writing staff, including Denny
14:19O'Neill at the height of his reinvention of Batman.
14:22But the wacky humor of Captain Marvel Adventures was tough to recapture, and a lot of the 70s
14:28Shazam tipped it too far to plain silliness. For instance, issue number 10's invasion of
14:33the Salad Men is exactly what it sounds like. Some vegetable-shaped aliens crash-land on
14:39Earth and freak out all the locals too much to get any help repairing their ship. Captain
14:43Marvel is the only one willing to hear them out, but he learns that the repairs are well
14:47out of his price range.
14:49The solution comes from an inspired bit of silliness. Cap and the vegetable aliens make
14:53and release a movie, and then collect the earnings, over the course of what appears
14:58to be about an afternoon. And all that silliness is accompanied by an appropriate blizzard
15:03of terrible puns, such as,
15:05"...as head lettuce, I am giving the orders."
15:08During Captain Marvel's DC years, he frequently teamed up with his old rival, Superman, and
15:16their adventures rarely got weirder than Oh, Captain, My Captain! from Action Comics number
15:21768. Cap's sidekicks, Captain Marvel Jr. and Mary Marvel, show up in Metropolis to ask
15:27for Superman's help, as they think their leader's been turned into a disembodied chin.
15:32Meanwhile, Jr. can't slow down, and Mary can only talk nonsense. Then a swarm of amphibians
15:38in the shape of one huge frog slices Mary in half. Superman finally realizes what she's
15:44trying to tell him through all the gibberish, and says the magic word to become Captain
15:49Marvel. Then Supes and his bodymate fly into the heart of the frog swarm and find the froghead
15:54Egyptian goddess Hekut, who is protesting all the frogs killed in cancer research.
16:00There's a lot of weirdness here, but also a lot of sincere love for Captain Marvel.
16:05When Superman defends Cap after Jr. dismisses him as an also-ran, he could just as easily
16:11be referring to the character's neglect in the real world. And when Superman describes
16:15Cap's negotiation with Hekut by expressing how he couldn't possibly think of anything
16:20more ludicrous or more moving, he could be talking about the best Captain Marvel stories.
16:26After Flashpoint rewrote the history of the DC Universe in 2011, Shazam! got as big an
16:32overhaul as anyone. For one thing, his name officially became Shazam! after years of everyone
16:37calling him that anyway.
16:38"'Shazam!'
16:39"'Well, hey there, son!'
16:42For another thing, the compact Marvel family expanded to the six lightning-powered heroes
16:46featured in the movies. Coinciding with the release of the first film in 2019, DC launched
16:52a new Shazam! comic book written by Geoff Johns. It's a strange one — not just for
16:57its content, but also because Johns seems to be constantly fighting with the material.
17:02And in the story of the Shazam! family's journey through the Seven Magic Lands, whenever the
17:06fairy tale fun tries to poke through, it's interrupted by actual or threatened dismemberment.
17:12But fairy tales can be plenty grim, too, and Johns handles that balance best with the Funlands
17:18and their ruler, King Kidd. At first, it's pure wish fulfillment in the form of a world-sized
17:25theme park with unlimited free rides and candy. The forever young king has made it a haven
17:30for abused children, but only as long as they stay children. His own history of abuse has
17:35turned him against all adults, so as soon as his subjects turn 18, they're enslaved
17:41underground to keep the coasters rolling. That includes Billy's foster sister, Mary,
17:46and King Kidd quickly turns on the rest of the family when they reveal their adult super-selves.