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Monday, October 20, 2008

My Grudge Against Shazam!

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Ok, I've been wanting to talk about this for a while, but never quite got around to doint it. But after reading the newest, Shazam!-centric issue of Back Issue!, I finally got the impetus to sit down and write about what I call My Grudge Against Shazam!

When I say grudge, I don't mean anything personal about Captain Marvel/Shazam!/The Big Red Cheese/The World's Mightiest Mortal, whatever you want to call him. I think he's a great character. I loved him as a kid, and I still like him today.

But as a kid, I always had a chip on my shoulder towards him, because, as far as I could tell, it was he who got a lot of the attention that I thought was due my hero, Aquaman.


In the late 1960s, Filmation had the rights to Superman, Batman, and Aquaman, and of course they each starred in their own series of successful cartoons, still popular to this day.

At some point in the early 1970s, the rights expired, and they were snapped up by Hanna-Barbera, along with Wonder Woman, who put them all in a little thing called Super Friends--again, popular to this day.

That left Filmation with not a lot of options, in terms of "A"-list characters with which to build a new TV show around. So they went with a character that the head of the network liked: Captain Marvel.
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Of course, DC made a big deal about their adding the good Captain to their stable of characters, with the debut of Shazam! in 1972. While Aquaman was relegated to only showing up in Justice League of America, Captain Marvel got a marketing push nearly unprecedented in comics back then. (In addition to his regular title, he headlined no less than three treasury-sized editions:)
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Even though the Shazam! comic series was not a big hit, the combination of it and the TV show reintroduced the character to a whole new generation of kids, and that meant, when it came time for merchandising, the Big Three--Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman--were of course represented. But when merchandisers had room for a fourth character to slap onto something, they often as not went for TV star Captain Marvel instead of the King of the Seven Seas.

As a kid, this drove me nuts. I kept looking at these ads, and wondering where the hell was Aquaman?? Sure, he made it onto a lot of merchandise himself (this blog is proof of that), but look at all the stuff he missed out on:
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...shoelaces?

Sometimes the indignity was really hard to take, like with the pencil sharpeners, a few pictures above. They had to go
out of their way take Aquaman off the Super Friends logo, and instead emblazoned one of the sharpeners with Shazam! As Arrested Development's Gob Bluth would say, "Come on!"

Sometimes it felt like toy manufacturers were really out to get poor Arthur. I remember seeing this ad on the inside of what seemed like every DC comics for two years:
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...now I have to admit, that Shazam! Car is really, really cool--but hardly necessary! Captain Marvel can fly!! Corgi could have repurposed Superman's Rock'Em Sock'Em Spaceship into an Aquaman Jet Ski with just a few tweaks. Harrumph, I say.

Even DC themselves got into the act sometimes, pushing Aquaman aside in favor of their big TV star:
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And of course, all this Shazam! stuff left a deep impression on kids of the 70s, some of whom grew up to become comic book pros themselves--guys like Paul Dini and Alex Ross, who produced that series of superb, treasury-sized books starring Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman...and Shazam!

To think, if only things had worked out differently, we might have gotten this:
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...I would've bought 100 copies of this. Easy. *sigh*

Now, I realize, I need to be realistic about this. As I've said here before, being Aquaman fan means having to manage expectations, because so frequently hopes are dashed (I guess its like being a Cubs fan).

Even if he had been available, a live-action Aquaman TV show would have been far beyond, budget-wise, what any production company could've managed. So I realize we really never could've had this:
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But sometimes I really wonder why, so frequently, Aquaman just misses that brass ring of success.

But since I want to end this angry screed on an up-note, I guess I could say, hey, I'm lucky that H-B tapped Aquaman to be in the Super Friends, otherwise the show might have looked like this:
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Holy Moley!



(Post Script: In my research for this piece, I had to scour every ad for DC superhero merchandise I could find. And in one instance, Aquaman and Shazam! had the right to both be mad:
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...a Green Arrow patch? And a Silver Age Green Arrow, at that? The mind reels...)

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ahh, you made me laugh. I know exactly what you mean, Rob. Nice job.

Siskoid said...

Come on, throw Golden Age Green Arrow fans a bone once in a while!

Anyone? Anyone?

Anonymous said...

Rob, you're lucky that HB didn't get their way in 1978. I've often heard HB wanted to add the Big Red Cheese to the Challenge of the Super Friends, and even have his arch-enemy Sivana run the Legion of Doom! When HB realized Filmation still had an animated option on their live-action star, that squashed that idea. If Cap had joined the SF proper, poor Arthur would have never got his fish tank cleaned after that.

I think all of this 70s merchandise influenced Alex Ross' persistent notion that Captain Marvel belongs in the classic JLA. DC's licensing arm seemed to agree with him!

Chris

Plaidstallions said...

Great piece Rob, I'm partial to both guys but the evidence is pretty overwhelming.

Adama said...

Hey, GA needs some occasionally too, ya know!

Paul Kupperberg said...

Wait...we're done talking about me...?

Anonymous said...

Umm... this MAY not be the best place to say this, but...

One guy is The World's Mightiest Mortal, and was the Keystone character for a publisher; the other...

I'm just sayin; is all!

Best,
-Craig W.

rob! said...

Adams-

I agree, GA deserves merchandise. But only after they get to Aquaman. and what's with the Silver Age GA costume??

Paul-

sorry, it had to end sometime.

Craig-

I agree, and I'll do you one better: there is NO appropriate place to say that. :)

Anonymous said...

Yeah, Rob, I feel the same way, but as I'm an 80's kid rather than a child of the 70's, it is the Alex Ross angle that gets to me. I love his work, Justice showed us just how awesome his Aquaman could be, and we should have had the big four in his treasury books, (as far as I'm concerned, Arthur's way cooler than Wonder Woman anyway) but instead we get Shazam. I would KILL for Ross to take on an Aquaman solo story....and we could have had that, if only Captain Marvel hadn't muscled in.

Luis said...

I'm sure Captain Marvel fans must be angry because in all of that merchandise you mention, the World's Mightiest Mortal is called "SHAZAM" instead of by his proper name - Captain Marvel.
That's little consolation to Aqua-fans, I know.

Anonymous said...

Great piece although I'm a bit torn. Y'see, my favorite super-hero is, of course, Aquaman. But my second favorite, at least over at DC, is Captain Marvel.

Part of it might be the fact that Cap is one of the few heroes my dad remembers reading about when he was a kid. Part of it might be that I couldn't always find DC's Shazam! series at my local stationary store. But I'm sure a huge part of it was that Cap was as powerful as Superman but was Supes' polar opposite in every other way.

Anonymous said...

"I'll do you one better: there is NO appropriate place to say that. :)"

Friend Rob, you ARE "The Great One"!

"the World's Mightiest Mortal is called "SHAZAM" instead of by his proper name - Captain Marvel"

Luis, that annoys the crap outta me - and I'm not even a big CM fan!
Okay, fine, that's the word on the masthead - but in the books, and on the TV show, he was called "Captain Marvel." Did 70's kids call Supes "ACTION," or Bat's "DETECTIVE"?

Best,
-Craig W.