Fawcett – Comics Archeology

Whiz Comics #25 (1941)
by C.C. Beck & Mac Raboy
cover by C.C. Beck & Pete Costanza

Since Captain Marvel is a kid you wouldn’t expect him to get his own sidekick, but he does.

The main story is actually a continuation from Master Comics #21 from the same month.
The cover date is December 1941; I don’t know how removed it was from the publishing date, but we are definitely at the very end of the pre-war Golden Age.

The reason why this continues from Master Comics is that Captain Nazi originates from there, specifically from a Bulletman story of all things.
I won’t cover the full Captain Nazi story, but a couple of things are worth pointing out.

While Marvel was limiting its use of Hitler to having him being punched on the cover or using obvious stand-ins, and DC Comics hasn’t even officially shown Hitler anywhere… Fawcett Comics were MUCH more direct in their approach.

While Fawcett Comics lacks a formal team equivalent to the Justice Society, at this point they’re doing a better job at keeping all their heroes in the same universe.

Also, while we tend to think of Fawcett as more kid-friendly than the competition, this is DEFINITELY a comic that predates the Comics Code.

But at the same time the comic breaks the fourth wall, leading to the story continuing on Whiz Comics.

With that out of the way, let’s move on to Whiz Comics #25.

I never understood the point of having Captain Marvel’s secret identity take a full job as a radio announcer. Doesn’t that kind of make the fact that Billy Batson is a kid a non-factor?

One thing that you must consider for Golden Age Captain Marvel is that anyone that meets him for more than two minutes knows his secret identity.

Captain Nazi’s way of fighting Captain Marvel is to just threaten to kill ONE person he knows, then disappearing when he’s saved.
I get that he can’t hurt Captain Marvel, since he’s shown that his invulnerability is too much to overcome, but it’s weird.
Also, don’t even try to figure out exactly why Captain Nazi has powers are… he’s strong and he flies because he has to.

However it turns out that Captain Nazi has a better plan than annoying superheroes: he sabotages a newly constructed dam.

And the way he has sabotaged the turbines is my making them move so fast that they can’t be stopped. SOMEHOW.

Sounds legit.

What did I tell you about everyone knowing Captain Marvel’s identity?

Captain Nazi… sabotaging the dam makes sense, and you want to keep Captain Marvel busy, but you should’ve done this without getting his attention first!
Wait, why am I giving suggestions to a Nazi?

Amazingly, the cover scene gets it into the comic! That is VERY rare for the Golden Age.

With that being taken care of, Billy Batson then reports for the testing of a military plane.
Why is this kid the ONLY reporter in the country!? You can’t even make the excuse that everyone else has been drafted, America isn’t even in the war yet!!!

The testing goes wrong because Captain Nazi. I guess this is the reason why he wanted to keep Captain Marvel busy with the dam.

Then Captain Marvel punches him into the ocean, saving the plane.

And I could’ve saved myself some time by starting the review from this point, because none of what happened so far is going to matter.
Not after Captain Nazi is saved by a stranger…

…who gets immediately Uncle Ben-ed.
Also, see if you can spot the anatomy mistake.

Nothing can be done about the father, but the son BARELY survives the attack and is rescued by Captain Marvel.

In a very Captain Marvel way.

In the Golden Age, even kids aren’t safe.

But Captain Marvel is so determined to save the kid that he brings him back to the Rock of Eternity, the same place from his origin story.

The old wizard is not allowed to save the kid, but turns out that Captain Marvel can share a bit of his own power…

…by having the kid say his name, transforming into Captain Marvel Junior.

That’s right: Captain Marvel Junior doesn’t transform by saying Shazam, like his predecessor, but by saying “Captain Marvel”.
Which famously means Captain Marvel Junior is the only superhero WHO CAN’T SAY HIS OWN NAME.

And so the story ends with a promise to continue the fight on Master Comics, and with Captain Nazi informing Hitler about his success at… killing one guy and crippling another.

Truly the most successful supervillain ever.

For completion, Captain Marvel Junior then appears on Master Comics #22 in another Bulletman story…

…which ends in nothing.

That’s because Captain Marvel Junior then kicks Bulletman out of the spotlight, becoming the cover story of the next Master Comics.

Captain Marvel Junior will fight Captain Nazi many, MANY times.
And if you think Captain Nazi is too silly… let’s agree to never talk about Captain Nippon.

Historical significance: 8/10
Captain Marvel Junior is important to the history of comics, but he doesn’t seem to have made the same impact of the original Captain Marvel.

Silver Age-ness: 5/10
Captain Nazi is equally remarkably tame and remarkably violent.

Does it stand the test of time? 6/10
Extremely simple and really hurt by the need to jump from series to series. Typically Captain Marvel stories from this era are much better when read as a whole, but since this has to jump over to Bulletman… it’s not that great.

How close is this to the modern character? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I’m not a huge Captain Marvel expert, but at least I’m knowledgeable about him… but the specifics of Captain Marvel Junior are lost on me.
Right from the start there’s a significant difference from Captain Marvel: Freddy Freeman (as we’ll later learn that’s the kid’s name) doesn’t transform into an adult when he says his magic word… in fact, he’s visually indistinguishable between the two forms.

He’s also a good indication of how popular Captain Marvel was, because believe it or not Captain Marvel Junior is the FIRST superhero spinoff to get his own regular series, in 1942.

There was a concious effort from Fawcett to avoid making him too much of a copy of Captain Marvel: that’s why he transforms into a teenager instead of an adult, and why his stories tend to be more realistically drawn than the usual Captain Marvel cartoony style.

Which doesn’t mean the stories don’t get completely bonkers, of course.

Even as a spinoff, Captain Marvel Junior continued to appear on both his own book AND on the main Captain Marvel books (yes, PLURAL) and ALSO on the pages of Marvel Family.
Yeah, Fawcett published a lot, and I do mean A LOT of Captain Marvel comics!!!

He lasted all the way up to Marvel Family #89 in 1954, and would’ve continued if Fawcett wasn’t basically forced by DC Comics into bankruptcy on dubious legal claims.
See the Captain Marvel review for details on that.

Captain Marvel Junior is part of the 1972 relaunch by DC Comics, after it had the rights to the character… but not the right to use the name “Captain Marvel” for the series!
Which makes Captain Marvel Junior the only superhero who not only can never say his own name: he can’t even be in the title!!!

That revival wasn’t very successful, but the 1995 relaunch of Captain Marvel did integrate him pretty well in the DC Universe. And Captain Marvel Junior was there from almost the beginning.

Once the book started to focus mostly on Captain Marvel and Mary Marvel, that left little room for Captain Marvel Junior… who promptly joined the Teen Titans.
Around this time he HAD to come up with a solution for the name problem: he couldn’t even INTRODUCE himself as Captain Marvel Junior, and in a team he really needed a way for the others to call him.
So he chose to call himself CM3… presumably with CM1 being Captain Marvel and CM2 being Mary Marvel (who in this continuity debuted before him).
Thankfully that didn’t stick, but the weirdness around his name persisted.

In 2005, DC brought a series of wild changes to the franchise.
So Shazam (the wizard) died, Captain Marvel took the wizard’s place, and Freddie became the new Captain Marvel after a series of trials.

I haven’t read the series; the premise COULD work, but I draw the line at the fact that the Marvel Family can now transform without saying the magic word.
THEN WHAT’S THE POINT???

Apparently I’m not the only one who had doubts about that incarnation, because the franchise was changed once more in 2011.

If you’ve seen the (surprisingly really good) Shazam movie, they’ve taken MOST of the characterizations and characters from this reboot. Including all the other adopted siblings.

Mercifully the movie didn’t use the redesign from this reboot, because both Freddie and his superhero identity are are now blonde.

And we’re back to having no idea how to call him. These days Captain Marvel goes by “Shazam” so they can use his name as the title of the series. But what about old Captain Marvel Junior?
Good question! But they seem to have settled on King Shazam.
Even CM3 was a better name.

No discussion about Captain Marvel Junior can be complete without talking about his biggest fan… none other than Elvis Presley!
He was such a fan that the recreation of his childhood bedroom includes a Captain Marvel Junior comic on the nightstand.

There’s a lot of speculation that Elvis might have based his looks on Captain Marvel Junior, both in his civilian and hero identity.
These are some of the comparisons I found; a few are a bit of a stretch, but the fact that Elvis was a Captain Marvel Junior reader is confirmed… so it’s legit to at least wonder.