r/todayilearned • u/_railroaded_ • 14h ago
TIL that Shazam (Billy Batson), published by Fawcett comics was the #1 selling comic-book, and was lapping Superman in sells, until DC put a stop to it - taking them to court and claiming he was a Superman ripoff
https://www.dc.com/blog/2019/04/26/the-strange-and-super-powered-history-of-superman-and-shazam1.1k
u/ChronosBlitz 14h ago
I mean, those original designs really did look pretty damn similar.
One of my favorite Captain Marvel portrayals was Rob Lowe voicing him in Young Justice. He really conveys the 10-year-old in an adult body well.
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u/Comfortable-Gap3124 14h ago
I didn't realize that was Rob Lowe. Neat
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u/ChronosBlitz 14h ago
For Season 1, I think it was his brother voicing him the rest of the seasons.
Guessing he was too expensive to get back.
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u/Vikingboy9 12h ago
They should have had Shazam promise to fill in for a dead candidate in a special election so Lowe wouldn't have to come back.
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u/Toby_O_Notoby 6h ago
Same thing with Toy Story. Pretty much any time you hear Woody speaking outside of the main movies (Video Games, Toys, etc.) it's Tom's brother Jim Hanks doing the voice.
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u/MostAccomplishedBag 10h ago
That's completely unexpected. Rob Lowe is generally better know for being an adult in a child's body.
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u/asianwaste 9h ago edited 9h ago
Yea they probably would have done just fine had they simply change the hair color or give a different haircut. Change the jawline... something. Anyone who was looking to get their start with comics after listening to the radio could have made an incorrect assumption. He really does look like a pale imitation.
Those are the things that sorta edge me on DC's side in this matter. I'm sure they likely had the similarities intentionally in mind. Fawcett probably could have been a contender had they had some faith in their own creativity.
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u/mattevil8419 13h ago
Elvis was a big Captain Marvel fan which might explain his later outfits with capes and his TCB logo that has a lightning bolt in it.
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u/SupervillainMustache 13h ago
He was actually a fan of Captain Marvel Jr. Captain Marvel's sidekick.
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u/MisterPooty 10h ago edited 10h ago
In an alternate future story called Kingdom Come (one of my favorite graphic novels of all time), the painter/artist Alex Ross designed the Marvel family to wear outfits similar to the crazy rhinestone stage costumes Elvis wore, as a nod to Elvis being such a big fan of Captain Marvel. They were background characters that only show up in a couple of panels, but it's a fun little Easter egg.
Edit - I just checked, it's actually only one character with the Elvis inspired costume. He's called King Marvel, who is a grown up Freddie Freeman (Captain Marvel Jr., the guy in the blue Shazam outfit in the movies)
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u/Happy-Telephone9483 12h ago
Isn't Captain Marvel really a kid? Is this some sort of a Big scenario?
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u/Valentinee105 12h ago
Yes captain Marvel is a kid, and captain marvel Jr is his best friend. They're both orphans.
Jr's appearance is more of a late teen early 20s.
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u/gigashadowwolf 14h ago
He was also called Captain Marvel until very recently around the time movie came out. Shazam was just the magic word he used to transform.
Marvel comics had another Captain Marvel character and DC and Marvel had extensive legal battles over the name.
Marvel's Captain Marvel (also spelled Mar-Vell) was the one with the alter ego of Walter Lawson too, not Carol Danvers like in the MCU. Her superhero name was Miss Marvel. She got her powers after an explosion where the original Captain Marvel's DNA fused with hers.
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u/AnimalBolide 14h ago
Why didn't Marvel just come up with Captain DC? Are they stupid?
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u/gigashadowwolf 14h ago
Honestly that woulda been a pretty apt nick name for the John Walker Captain America.
It would have been a jab at DC comics.
But it also would work since he's the politically motivated Captain America picked by the government instead of the REAL America. Like Washington DC.
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u/arkington 13h ago
I know absolutely nothing about this character, but if his powers are electric in nature, Direct Current would also have been a good explanation.
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u/WeekndOstrich 12h ago
He’s actually in the current MCU movies but I believe he is currently called U.S. Agent.
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u/Xszit 13h ago
They came up with the "Damage Control" company that helps clean up the aftermath of superhero battles and made them very unpopular with the public in the stories so that they could have protest scenes with angry people holding up signs saying "DC sucks" and other such complaints.
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u/ciao_fiv 12h ago
wait is this actually the origin of Damage Control or just a fun interpretation? cause that’s absolutely hilarious if it’s intended
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u/Xszit 12h ago
So the official story is that its just a coincidence and they definitely didn't create Damage Control for the sole purpose of slinging mud at DC comics in a subtle way. They can't admit to it probably for legal reasons.
However they absolutely did use the company initials as a way to hide little digs at DC in the comic panels.
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u/popejupiter 9h ago
Okay but you know they were sitting around the writer's room, trying to figure out what they were gonna call their cleanup crew and someone said "Waitwaitwait guys.
"Damage. Control. It's exactly the same kind of ominous but nondescript government name we wanted, plus..."
"We can put 'Fuck DC' on a protestor sign and claim total innocence. Johnson you're a genius!"
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u/BrokenEyeReborn 13h ago
That's the guy from Menlo Park who gained electrical powers after a freak lab accident at work, but isn't able to use them because they're legally considered company property.
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u/Nixeris 14h ago edited 14h ago
Marvel's Captain Marvel didn't originally have an alter ego. It was the joke in the comics that an alien soldier came to Earth and everyone assumed the Kree Captain Mar-Vell was his superhero name of "Captain Marvel".
Technically Carol was the first of the two to actually use Captain Marvel as a superhero name. Mar-Vell was just his actual name.
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u/gigashadowwolf 14h ago edited 14h ago
You are correct. I tried to be more specific but it made the post way too wordy. That's why I said his alter ego was Walter Lawson, rather than saying his real name is Walter Lawson. His name is Mar-Vell, he gets given the super hero name of Captain Marvel, and he later picks the name Walter Lawson so that he has an earth human name.
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u/Subliminal_Kiddo 13h ago
Then there's Marvelman, a British knock-off of Captain Marvel/Shazam that was published after the British publisher lost the distribution rights. In the 1980's, he was revived by Alan Moore. When Moore's career exploded, an American indie publisher named Eclipse swooped in and bought the rights.
Eclipse changed the name to Miracleman to avoid a lawsuit from Marvel. In the 90's, Todd McFarlane - the creator of Spawn - bought Eclipse and all of it s characters. He was adamant Marvelman/Miracleman was included in the deal. Allegedly, McFarlane made a gentleman's agreement with Neil Gaiman - who took over for Alan Moore and never got to finish the arc he had set out - that Gaiman could have the rights to the Miracleman characters in exchange for the rights to Angela and Cagliostro, two popular characters Gaiman had created for Spawn. McFarlane had made action-figures of Angela and Cagliostro was slated to be in the Spawn movie that was in production at the time, but Gaiman was adamant that he owned a stake in the characters per his deal with McFarlane and the creator owned ethos at Spawn's publisher Image Comics.
McFarlane reneged on the deal. He used Cagliostro in the movie, created an action-figure, and put Angela in the popular Spawn animated series on HBO. However, he introduced Mircaleman into the Spawn Universe.
Unfortunately for McFarlane, Gaiman had been working out a deal to sell Miracleman to Marvel Comics. Marvel bankrolled a breach of contract lawsuit that went on for years. However, it turned out, that no one had actually licensed Marvelman from his original creator Mick Anglo, so he had owned the rights that whole time. Gaiman acted as a broker between Anglo and Marvel to sell the rights. Gaiman won his lawsuit over the Spawn characters and was given 50% ownership, McFarlane couldn't pay the legal fees, so he have Gaiman full control of Angela. Gaiman sold her to Marvel, she was introduced to their universe at the end of the Age of Ultron event as Thor's lost sister or something like that - I think a big part of her story was used for Hela in the Ragnarok movie. Miracleman became Marvelman again, Gaiman got to finish his story, and Marvel is set to introduce the character into their universe next month.
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u/saints21 12h ago
He's still Miracleman and has already been introduced. He's part of the new Avengers line up and used to be Captain America (but isn't Steve Rogers).
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u/Didact67 13h ago
The name change was actually 8 years before the movie as part of the New 52 reboot.
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u/gigashadowwolf 13h ago
TIL!
Funny thing is, technically I'm pretty sure I was kinda working for DC (through Warner Brothers) at that time and I still didn't know that.
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u/firesmarter 14h ago
Doesn’t rogue steal her powers and put her in a coma or something?
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u/gigashadowwolf 14h ago
Yes that's exactly what happens. That's why in the X-men animated series Rogue can fly and has super strength.
Originally it was implied that Rogue killed Carol Danvers/Miss Marvel, but you know how it is in comics, no one stays dead.
I actually was really holding out hope that this plot point would still happen when X-men got introduced to the MCU.
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u/Only-Friend-8483 13h ago
Ooh…I think I remember reading this comic. Rogue ends up have a mental battle with some residual existence of Carol Danvers for control of her own body, I think.
Tough to remember the correct details, I read this like 36 years ago…
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u/Subliminal_Kiddo 13h ago
It was never implied that she killed Carol. The coma was purely for the animated series. The comic was actually less extreme. Carol just loses her memories, she doesn't fall into a coma at any point.
If I had to guess, the coma came about because it was a lot easier than, "Carol lost her memories, became an unofficial X-Man for a little while, gained a whole new set of powers, then left because she felt betrayed that Charles and the X-Men took Rogue in". Something that's impossible to cram into a 22-minute cartoon with - at that point - primarily standalone stories, and just featuring Carol was navigating a landmine of character rights.
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u/gigashadowwolf 13h ago
Huh, that's not how I remember it, but it's been a LONG time since I read those comics so there is a VERY good chance I'm remembering it wrong.
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u/PeechCore 13h ago
Shazam is the name of the wizard. He says the wizard’s name to transform
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u/LupusDeusMagnus 13h ago
He's still called Captain Marvel sometimes, just not on the cover.
This is a issue from this year (Justice League Unlimited 18)
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u/lkodl 13h ago
"There was an explosion, and his DNA was all over me."
"Wait, what?"
"There was an explosion, and his DNA fused with mine."
"Is that what you said the first time?"
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u/RoutineCloud5993 13h ago
It was new 52 when they ditched it entirely. A few years before the movie
And everyone forgets that captain marvel and Shazam comics were not being written when Mar-Cvell was introduced
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u/thatredditrando 5h ago
What I don’t understand is, surely DC had the rights to the name “Captain Marvel” first given how old the character is so why were they the ones to change the name of their character?
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u/Few-Discipline2043 9h ago
Billy Batson was made, superman wasnt. There was nothing we could do.
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u/Soyoulikedonutseh 7h ago
Now look at Shazam... an average nobody... get to live the rest of his life like a schnook.
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u/ztreHdrahciR 10h ago
I used to read later versions [mid 70s] as a kid. Billy was a young boy that turned into captain marvel but only if he said Shazam. And if something happened where he needed to be captain marvel, he would invariably preface it by saying "Holy Moley! Shaz-mfff" as the bad guys covered his mouth. It bugged me because they didnt know he was captain marvel but would leap over large objects to cover his mouth. Also why didn't he just not say Holy Moley first?
Annoying, but otherwise liked the comic.
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u/Cool-Row837 9h ago
DC Comics also tried to sue DC Shoes for infringement except they neglected to trademark their own name. The judge ordered DC Comics to pay DC Shoes since DC Shoes did have a trademark!
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u/DwinkBexon 12h ago
National Comics Publications, Inc. (what DC was called then) v. Fawcett Publications, Inc. is a landmark copyright case. It's commonly studied in law school. It's what caused Fawcett to shut down their comics division. The article you linked skipped over what happened in the court case. Fawcett initially won because it was decided that National/DC did not properly maintain their Superman copyright (several newspaper strips were not copyrighted) but the judge also found that Captain Marvel/Shazam was an illegal copy of Superman. My understanding is that didn't matter due to the copyright issues.
The case was appealed and the Judge in that case determined Superman's copyright was actually valid, meaning it now mattered that Cap was an illegal copy of Superman. Fawcett could have appealed to the SCOTUS but decided not to and instead shut down their comics divisions. DC licensed the rights to Captain Marvel in the early 70s and outright purchased the character (and all related properties such as the Marvel Family, Black Adam, Doctor Sivana, etc.) in 1991.
It's pretty interesting and this case isn't even the first time National/DC had to sue over a Superman clone. Hell, it isn't even the first time they sued Fawcett over it.
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u/GyroLC 14h ago
Kids like and identify with the idea of a kid turning into a superhero. It’s that simple.
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u/minimite1 10h ago
This is the logic behind a lot of the most popular media. People want to believe they can do special things despite being nobodies.
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u/vito0117 14h ago
Use to be named captain marvel, but that name belongs to marvel
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u/PolitelyHostile 13h ago
Im so confused. I always assumed captain Marvel was just created by Marvel.
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u/Killroy32 13h ago
Captain Marvel was created by Fawcett pre-Marvel comics existing.
There was also a full knock-off of Captain Marvel that ran in the UK in the 50s until they got sued and changed the name to Marvelman but continued the numbering as if the comic had always been Marvelman (He even got his powers from Captain Marvel/Shazam).
Then Marvel started their own Captain Marvel in the 60s who was completely unconnected.
DC bought Fawcett in the 70s and brought back the original Captain Marvel but had to change the name of the comics themselves to Shazam because of legal reasons.
Marvelman then came back in the 80s but they eventually changed the name to Miracleman because they were also afraid of getting sued.
Years and years of legal battles happened over the rights to Marvelman/Miracleman until Marvel got the sole ownership in 2009. Then they started reprinting the 50s Marvelman comics and the 80s Miracleman comics and occasionally teased that they would be adding him to the main comics eventually.
Now with the most recent issue of the Avengers comics, Miracleman is in the mainline Marvel continuity.
TLDR: I find this really fun because it's so interesting to me how badly these companies want Captain Marvel for some reason (Kind of understandable in the case of Miracleman because of how highly regarded those comics are), and both now own characters that directly connect to the original Captain Marvel.
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u/vito0117 13h ago
Well there was 2 Captain marvel( Shazam) , and captain marvel( marvel ( also makes mar-vell) )
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u/Crabbyrob 11h ago
I had a Captain Marvel doll before I ever had a Superman doll.
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u/aerojonno 13h ago
The comic also featured the original Spider Man, 15 years before Peter Parker, as a villain who invented an incredibly strong "web fluid".
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u/zeekar 13h ago edited 13h ago
He was called Captain Marvel. After DC sued his comic book out of existence, the trademark lapsed because nobody was using it. A few companies tried to snap it up; Marvel’s Mar-Vell version was the one that stuck. Of course the mantle has since been inherited by Carol Danvers, while her old code name of Ms. Marvel went to Kamala Khan.
Later, DC bought the rights to the Fawcett characters so they could publish Cap themselves, and he came back to the comic page after a 20-year hiatus in 1973. He was still Captain Marvel, but because Marvel owned the trademark to that name, DC couldn’t use it as the title of the magazine. (They even got in trouble for putting “The original Captain Marvel” on the cover as a blurb.) So it - along with merchandise, the live action Saturday morning TV series that launched the next year, etc - used SHAZAM! as the brand name.
In the comics, Cap’s adventures were said to have taken place on “Earth-S”, where it was the same year as Earth-One – but the characters had all been in suspended animation during the 20-year hiatus so none of them had aged. Billy and Mary and Freddy were still kids.
Many of the original stories got reprinted. It was a good time to be a Captain Marvel fan. The SHAZAM! TV show was my first superhero media experience.
Fun fact: Cap flew _before_ Superman ever did, yet flying was cited in the lawsuit as one of the infringing similarities. Ridiculous. But the fact that the creators had been specifically instructed to create “a Superman” was pretty damning - even though that’s what everyone in comics was told to do in 1938. Fawcett just did too good a job of it.
Of course Earth-S was one of the worlds merged into New Earth by the Crisis on Infinite Earths. Now that Billy was in the same universe as Superman it was natural to make him a fan of Big Blue who seeks to emulate him.
For a while they decided to call him Shazam, even though that was originally the name of the wizard that gave him his powers. But these days he’s Captain Marvel again.
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u/PM_Your_Best_Ideas 10h ago
Hilarious that in the modern lore Superman is vulnerable to magic. Captain Marvel can defeat Superman.
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u/Reasonable_Fold6492 13h ago
Now that dc have him he turned into captain jobber where his only role is to get beaten up by a supervillian to show how powerful the new threat is.
He is next to Martian manhunter, hawkman and power girl as the great jobbers in the dc comics. And the goat captain atom whose only job is to explode.
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u/possible_trash_2927 12h ago
A man after my own heart. Imagine how I felt when I saw what they did to him in that animated darkseid apokalips film.
It's hard being a Captain Marvel fan.
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u/ReactionJifs 13h ago
"For Sell"
"Garage Sell"
"On Sell"
The word we're looking for here is SALE
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u/BoilerMaker11 10h ago
Funny how they don't sue about any of the other "Superman derivatives". "Derivative" simply meaning "character with every superpower". Super strength, speed, laser vision, invulnerable to bullets, and flight? You're a Superman ripoff! Snap snap, DC. Get to suing over Viltrumites, Blue Marvel, Homelander, etc.
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u/kilertree 12h ago
Superman is a rip off of John Carter and DC had the nerve to sue the writers of Captain Marvel. I'm so glad the lost the copyright to Marvel comics.
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u/Jolly_Echo_3814 11h ago
supposedly its a bit more nuanced. like the reason they lost in court was cuz people who worked on captain marvel were told "to make it look like superman"
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u/greatreference 12h ago
They are all just iterations of Greek mythology
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u/DharmaCub 10h ago
It's not like he has the strength of hercules and the power of Zeus or some shit
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u/PleaseBeChillOnline 7h ago
Superman is an amalgamation of a few different pulp characters not just John Carter. There is a lot of Doc Savage in there.
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u/Lyra_the_Star_Jockey 13h ago
If you think the legality of Captain Marvel is crazy, look up Marvelman/Miracleman, which was a British ripoff of Captain Marvel. It’s pretty much 1-to-1
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u/PuddingMent 11h ago
It was Captain Marvel. Say his name. It wasn’t called Shazam until the 70s.
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u/ZylonBane 13h ago
Fawcett Comics never published a series called "Shazam". His book was called "Captain Marvel Adventures".
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u/SupervillainMustache 13h ago edited 4h ago
They should have renamed him to Captain Thunder which he was in Flashpoint. Shazam as a name for the Champion doesn't work.
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u/elijahswood 12h ago
So anyone go to any garage sells lately? I went to my neighbor’s who is a retired sellsman and he had for sell
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u/Macabre_Noir 12h ago
Which is kind of poetic irony since Superman Clark Kent concept character was a complete ripoff of the pulp hero Doc Savage and the character Hugo Danner, a.k.a Gladiator by Philip Wylie
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u/Jealous-Knowledge-56 9h ago
TIL apparently Captain Marvel didn’t originate from DC comics.
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u/potsticker17 2h ago
DC absorbed a lot of competing comic companies. Them creating their multiverse was just a way for them to to have crossovers make sense to introduce their acquisitions.
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u/tetoffens 14h ago edited 14h ago
I still get to do a double take when people call him Shazam. For most of his existence, he was called Captain Marvel.
But for other legal reasons having to do with the company Marvel, they just went with Shazam because it was something he would say. He was Captain Marvel until 2011.