Whatever Happened to the World's Mightiest Mortal, ...or if Captain Marvel had died in 1953 Options

[JonnyDC]

JonnyDC here and I’m asking… what if Captain Marvel had died in 1953?

Captain Marvel as we all know is a boy named Billy Batson who, on saying “Shazam,” he becomes the World’s mightiest mortal. Due in part to DC’s not being able to legally call him “Captain Marvel” due to how Marvel comics owns that name and due in greater part how DC has used him poorly, Captain Marvel has not been one of the more popular DC characters in the time he’s been with the company. In these days when he and his supporting cast is lucky to have one comic book, it is hard to believe that in the 1940s the Marvel family had no less than seven comic books. Cap headlined Whiz and had Captain Marvel Adventures. Jr. headlined Master Comics and had Captain Marvel Jr. Mary headlined Wow comics and had Mary Marvel. They also all worked together in Marvel Family Adventures. In fact, the Marvel quotient goes up to eight if you include Hoppy the Marvel Bunny.

Captain Marvel’s golden age is long ended and he’s but a shadow of his former self. The mighty have fallen and… I should say Superman and fault to say you know what but I can’t. But I can say its DC management’s fault. (I don’t want to say DC’s fault because I do love DC even if individual employees sometimes make bad decisions. If only the Czar knew. ) In 1953 DC called Cap and Fawcett out for copyright infringement and in the end Fawcett swore never to publish Captain Marvel again. The stories ended with no proper resolution and when DC bought the rights to Cap in 1972 the decades long absence was explained by saying that on his last mission Cap had been placed in suspended animation. At first there seemed hope, especially with how CC Beck, Cap’s creator was there to draw his old boy once again. But when Beck himself turned against the revival, you knew something was wrong.

In some ways, Cap’s revival has done him more harm than good because ever since he’s come to DC, he’s been seen as little more than a poor man’s Superman. His first DC story in fact has you know who introducing Billy. So what if Cap had died in 1953? What if Fawcett having agreed to cease publication decided to go out with a bang? What if they asked, Whatever Happened to the World’s Mightiest Mortal?

Retroactively taking a page from Alan Moore’s story "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow," imagine Captain Marvel story where Cap died. It has been years, perhaps even decades, and the people of Fawcett miss their champion. One homeless boy staggers about and finds a strange woman who leads him to a train and a subway. He’s bought to someone whom we believe is Shazam. “Shazam” introduces himself and they jointly recount the story of Captain Marvel. The boy agrees and tells how the villains launched one final attack. Cap brings everyone—his friends from Whiz Radio, Uncle Dudly, Mr. Tawky Tawny, Cissie Summerly—to the rock of eternity to wait for one final battle. Poor Cap, his whole world is falling apart. The villains attack and one of the casualties is Shazam himself. (But wait isn’t Shazam telling the story?) In the final battle most everyone dies including Billy who died saving the world. Mr. Morris of Whiz Radio broadcasts the news to the world and they mourn.

“Shazam” then tells the boy that Captain Marvel did in fact not die. He survived though only barely and waited for the time when he could pass the torch onto another. (The woman at his side is thus revealed to be Cissie Summerly.)

So Billy the New Shazam tells the boy, say my name! Be the Champion! And it closes with the boy shouting Shazam! In place of it being marked the end, the caption at the bottom of the page reads… the beginning. We then see a brief letter from artist/creator CC Beck and writer Otto Binder saying thanks for being our fans, it’s was a pleasure writing, until the next adventure.

This serves two reasons… If there is never another Captain Marvel story, then at least we get to go out with a bang. And if there are more (DC buys the rights, publishes Shazam), you have a perfect clean slate to work on with the kid. And it doesn’t work out (and it didn’t)… well, at least the REAL Captain Marvel can rest in peace because DC’s character is completely separate from the original character. What do you say?

[Nightwing]

Captain Marvel did die in 1953, just as Plastic Man died by the same bullet that claimed Jack Cole. We've been dealing with zombies in comics longer than one might think.

That said, your ending probably would have been preferable to what we got, which was just a sudden vanishing act. Personally I like to think Cap and his pals are still knocking around out there in some other reality, safe from the reach of anyone at DC. Maybe they're in that same happy limbo where Donald and Unca Scrooge are drawn by Carl Barks, Jim West is still a short white guy and not a skinny black rapper, Jim Phelps is still a good guy and not a traitor, and...what the heck...the Beatles never broke up.

You know, the universe where these recordings came from.