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Captain Marvel/Shazam!
You were expecting a "Billy Batson" cover, weren't you?
What Cracked Said:
(T)hese generic-brand rip offs only make sense if the original is doing monster business. That’s not the case with Superman, though, whose last film was greeted with a thundering “meh.” Here, you have a character with all the problems of Superman (namely, the all-powerful invincibility that makes him impossible to identify with), only without the familiarity and with a foppish gold sash around his waist.
What BW Says:
They may be surprised how well Captain Marvel is known, even if they think his name is Shazam. In the days before DC’s lawsuit ruined Fawcett Publications, Captain Marvel was more famous than Superman, so it might have been a different world had the lawsuit not happened or the legal fees not so expensive. Besides, Marvel has done well in recent years with Iron Man, and that character has been a bit obscure, not to mention Blade the Vampire Hunter. These movies may be a good way to introduce characters who don’t have the splash of Superman, Batman, or Spider-Man. Do you know why they’re so popular? Movies and TV shows! Spider-Man was remembered because of his cartoon, and both Supes and Bats have been part of our pop culture for the longest time thanks to George Reeve and Adam West respectively, not to mention the blockbuster movies.
If there was any negative about the movie, I already spelled it out in a recent article. To summarize, the screenwriter attached to the movie had wanted to portray Billy as a kid who didn’t want to give up being Captain Marvel and just run around as a superpowered adult. His reasoning is what kid would want to go back to being normal? I hope I answered his question in that piece, so give it a read. Again, with a writer who “gets it”, I might have had higher hopes for the film, and would have liked to see Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as Black Adam. Alas, we will never know.
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