Hey, when did Captain Marvel turn into Ms. Captain Marvel?

[packman]

Haven't read a comic book in decades, but what happened?




To:



Seems like Marvel has made it official: Academy Award-winning actress Brie Larson will play Captain Marvel in the studio's first female-led film.

[Firebrand Gary]

1. I've never, ever heard the term Ms. Captain...

[Warpy]

4. No, it's just Captain

Inside plumbing makes no difference in rank.

It is rather a sign that Hollywood is completely out of gas if they have to give all those comic book movies female leads to try to make them interesting again.

[TDale313]

2. Captain's can't be female?

Love the actor, so kinda looking forward to this.

[white_wolf]

3. Copy right issues.

DC's Captain Marvel, currently known as Shazam, came first, but since DC stopped using the character for several years, the courts ruled that Marvel, who also had a character called Captain Marvel, had the rights to use the name "Captain Marvel" on the front of books and in marketing so DC used Shazam for Billy Baxton.

[one_voice]

5. Here

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Marvel_(Marvel_Comics)

Multiple cap. marvels.

[Hong Kong Cavalier]

6. *dons geek hat*

The top image is Captain Marvel (Also known as Shazam) from the DC Comics Universe.

The bottom one is Captain Marvel from the Marvel Universe.
Also known once as Ms. Marvel.

From the Wiki for Captain Marvel (DC version)

In order to transform into Captain Marvel, Billy Batson (his alter ego) must speak the wizard named (Shazam), an acronym for the six legendary figures who agreed to grant aspects of themselves to a willing subject: the wisdom of Solomon, the strength of Hercules, the stamina of Atlas, the power of Zeus, the invulnerability of Achilles (presumably less the heel), and the speed of Mercury. Speaking the word produces a bolt of magic lightning which transforms Billy into Captain Marvel. Speaking the word again reverses the transformation with another bolt of lightning.

Now you may be asking why two versions?

Following a trial in which DC Comics sued Fawcett Comics for breach of copyright, claiming Fawcett's Captain Marvel was too similar to Superman, the latter stopped publishing Captain Marvel.[2] In the late sixties Marvel gained the trademark "Captain Marvel" with their first series, forcing DC to call their Captain Marvel comic book Shazam! when they gained the rights to publish the vintage hero starting in the early 1970s.

And is this Carol Danvers (Played by Brie Larson) coming from?

Ms. Marvel is the name of several fictional superheroes appearing in comic books published by Marvel Comics. The character was originally conceived as a female counterpart to Captain Marvel. Like Captain Marvel, most of the bearers of the Ms. Marvel title gain their powers through Kree technology or genetics. Marvel has published four ongoing comic series titled Ms. Marvel, with the first two starring Carol Danvers, and the third and fourth starring Kamala Khan.

On Edit: white_wolf beat me to it

[virgogal]

18. Ms. Marvel is part of the summer reading assignment at my grandaughter's high school.

She said they are "graphic novels". That was a new one for me.

[kentauros]

23. Here's a link to the original Fawcett versions:

Fawcett Comics (Those are full comics, by the way, archived on a site that does just that for any comics in the public domain.)

And even though DC won their lawsuit, there are superheroes galore that are almost like Superman, and yet they haven't been sued into submission. Capt. Marvel by Fawcett must have been doing well in sales and eating into Superman's profits

[Act_of_Reparation]

7. Since 1977.

The current Ms. Marvel is Kamala Khan: a Pakistani-American teenager from Jersey City.

[sweetloukillbot]

8. Completely different character.

DC sued the creators of the original Captain Marvel for copying Superman, and the character was re-named Shazam. At that point Marvel scooped up the name Captain Marvel for an alien character named Mar-Vell. This was probably around 1970 or so. This particular character was Ms. Marvel till fairly recently, when she took over as Captain Marvel. The new Ms. Marvel is a 16-year-old Muslim girl. Rogue from the X-Men figures into the mix as well, but I'm not sure how.

[reddread]

33. yeah, no.

not much accuracy there.
but let us ponder Carl Burgo's version as well.
naturally, an android.

https://www.google.com/search?q=carl+burgos+captain+marvel&biw=1366&bih=643&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiExOP1go_OAhVU6GMKHYPHDvMQsAQIIw

[temporary311]

9. Marvel created their own Captain Marvel

after DC sued the publishers of the original Captain Marvel for being a Superman ripoff or something.
Then that Captain Marvel died, and Ms. Marvel took on the mantle.

[DarthDem]

10. Can't Blame You for Being Confused

Captain Marvel, or Shazam, male verison, is a DC Comics character, mostly used in animated features.

Ms. Marvel, later changed to Captain Marvel, is a Marvel Comics character. She's who Brie Larson will be playing.

So, two separate characters and universes. Why DC had a character Captain Marvel is highly confusing and has to do with intellectual property issues.

This explains it all pretty well:

http://io9.gizmodo.com/the-captain-marvel-ms-marvel-shazam-clusterf-ck-explai-1251423862

[exboyfil]

11. Now this will get complicated

The Captain Marvel you see in the first picture is the original that was created in Fawcett Comics. Because it competed so well with DC (and is such an obvious knock off), DC got Fawcett to stop publishing it in the 1940s.

Fast forward to the 1960s and a Captain Mar-Vell was introduced into Marvel Comics. He s a Kree warrior that takes up as a super hero on Earth. Eventually he dies of cancer (famous Graphic Novel - one of the first).

Eventually a human Carol Danvers becomes Ms. Marvel through Kree technology. She lost her powers and eventually regained them (actually Rogue of the X-Men sucked her dry). That is the Captain Marvel appearing in the upcoming MCU movie.

Now ironically DC bought the rights to Captain Marvel and his family in the 1970s from Fawcett. He started appearing in DC comics in his own universe (eventually integrated into the Superman/Batman DC universe). A further irony is that Fawcett/DC lost the rights to the name Captain Marvel which now resides with Marvel Comics (appropriately enough). Captain Marvel now goes by Shazam.

http://io9.gizmodo.com/the-captain-marvel-ms-marvel-shazam-clusterf-ck-explai-1251423862

[MattP]

12. Shazam used to have a whole family if remember my youth

[Revanchist]

14. Yep

[packman]

21. Gotta give me the link to that -

I can't believe some of those characters.

[kentauros]

25. I don't have a link to that,

but here's a link to Fawcett Publications, at least those so far collected and scanned for viewing

[packman]

27. Thanks, going to bookmark that and spend some time there

Lash Larue, Bulletman - bringing back a lot of memories.

[kentauros]

29. It's a huge site,

and there's another one like it, which I learned about first, called The Digital Comic Museum. It's nice to search both because they don't always have the same comics in their archives

[Revanchist]

13. The top picture isn't Captian Marvel

That is Shazam and is a DC Comics character. The bottom picture is Captain Marvel/Ms. Marvel depending on the year and person wearing the mantel and is owned by Marvel Comics. It looks like Marvel Studios is going with the Carol Danvers version who is the current Captain Marvel and former Ms. Marvel instead of the current Ms. Marvel who is a 16 year old Pakistani-American named Kamala Khan.

[Recursion]

24. I love Kamala Khan

She got my wife into comic books with me.

[Nevernose]

15. Ms. Marvel is actually the 1st Muslim female superhero

And although I expected it to be pandering, it turns out it's AMAZING and award winning.

The saga of Captain Marvel ownership has been the subject of epic proportions; several books have been written on the subject. Some law schools offer an optional class n the subject as an exploration into intellectual property, trademarks, copyrights, etc.

[exboyfil]

16. I think that would have been an interesting way to go

instead of Carol Danvers. Perhaps Phase IV?

[Codeine]

17. DC vs Marvel -- never cross the streams! nt

[exboyfil]

19. Never

Darkseid (DC) - Thanos (Marvel) (this is actually a pretty big deal since both are the upcoming heavies in critical movies)
Sub Mariner (Marvel) - Aquaman (I think this one can be a pretty big deal given that Sub Mariner is such a cool character - he started out cool - Aquaman has gotten cool by copying Sub Mariner)

Not widely known is that the original Human Torch was an android (this was in the 1940s). This later set the stage for the Vision (Marvel)/Red Tornado (DC) stories. Actually Vision was originally made from the Human Torch (I think this was ret conned at some point).

Other huge copying job was Fantastic Four (Marvel) - The Incredibles (Pixar). Really Fox should have sued Pixar at the time (a character that has both the ability to form force shields and invisibility). Of course The Incredibles is the only decent Fantastic Four movie that has even been made (including even Marvel animation which has been hideous and almost as bad as the latest movie).

Simply 100s of knock offs.

http://comicisland.org/marvel-vs-dc-top-10-copy-cat-characters/

[Iggo]

20. Here's the Mar-Vell I remember.

[Rex]

22. Completely different character.

One is DC the other Marvel.

[sweetloukillbot]

26. To further complicate things...

A British version of Captain Marvel (Shazam) was created in the 50s, called Marvelman. The comic was revived in the 80s by Alan Moore (and later Neil Gaiman), but for US markets the name had to be changed to Miracleman. The company publishing it went under in the 90s, it languished in limbo as various people fought over the rights for almost 20 years, until Marvel got a hold of it a few years ago. So now Marvel is rereleasing Miracleman, a renamed and bald-faced copy of the Shazam Captain Marvel in addition to Captain Marvel.

Note, this is not a dig at Alan Moore's Miracleman - it is an incredible series and Neil Gaiman's incomplete run on it is equally good.

[ProudToBeBlueInRhody]

28. Not the same character, not even same universe

The female Captain Marvel film has been on deck for awhile.

I want my Black Widow movie first.....

[Orrex]

34. ^^That

I want my Black Widow movie first.....

Absolutely! The character has proven popular onscreen, Scarlett Johansson is great in the role and she's a bankable box office draw.

GIVE HER A MOVIE!

[chrisau214]

30. This Is All Actually Fairly Simple

In 1939 the original version of Captain Marvel published by Fawcett appeared in 'Whiz Comics' #1.

This Captain Marvel started selling really well so DC sued claiming that Captain Marvel was ripping off Superman.

This suit went on for a long time. Eventually Fawcett threw in the towel and stopped publishing comics altogether.

The original Captain Marvel disappeared in 1954.

In 1967 Marvel comics created their own character named Captain Marvel. The first Marvel version of Captain Marvel died in 1982 and a couple of others people have taken on the mantle in the decades since.

In 1972 DC bought the license to publish the original Captain Marvel from Fawcett. DC then published the first issue of the new Captain Marvel series under the 'Shazam' title in 1973. The comic was actually titled 'Shazam - The Adventures of the Original Captain Marvel'.

DC soon received a cease and desist order from Marvel claiming ownership of the name.

A few twists and turns later DC retitled their comic 'Shazam - The World's Mightiest Mortal'. The character was still named Captain Marvel in the stories but that name couldn't be used on the cover or on any merchandise.

This remained the status quo until DC rebooted their universe in 2001 with the 'New 52'.

At that point DC decided to simply call their character Shazam. They can still call him Captain Marvel in the stories and, in fact, within the DC universe there is still a version of the character that uses that name. But for now their main universe version of the character is known as 'Shazam'.

So that's the basics.

If you really want to complicate matters we can throw in 'Marvelman' who was a pretty direct British published copy of the original Captain Marvel. When this character was later published in the United States the character had to be renamed 'Miracleman'.

Then a couple of years ago Marvel acquired the rights to that character and renamed him from 'Miracleman' back to his original 'Marvelman'.

Phew...

None of this even gets into how the M.F. (Archie Comics) version of Captain Marvel fits into the story. That short lived Captain Marvel was a robot whose limbs separated from his body when he uttered the word 'Split'. To get his limbs to reconnect to his body he had to say the word 'Xam'.

No really.

And, finally, to complicate matters just a bit more...

Both the DC and Marvel versions of Captain Marvel have movies in the works. The DC movie will be titled 'Shazam' and the Marvel movie will be titled 'Captain Marvel'.

No word on any potential Marvelman/Miracleman or Archie Comics Captain Marvel movies.

[Javaman]

31. Personally, I think it's a great idea.

you should check out the comic book forum.

[Iggo]

32. I forgot about that forum. Thanks for the reminder!

[Arkana]

35. Top one isn't Captain Marvel anymore.

He's Shazam.