Jeff Smith Returns with Captain Marvel
This story originally appeared in PW Comics Week on January 30, 2007 Sign up now!
by Ian Brill, PW Comics Week -- Publishers Weekly, 1/30/2007
Over the decades DC Comics has tried relaunching the golden era superhero Captain Marvel, with varying degrees of success. Now DC is turning to Jeff Smith, best known for his award-winning fantasy comic Bone, to relaunch the series once again with Shazam: Monster Society of Evil, a new Captain Marvel series written and illustrated by Smith that will begin in February.
During the 1940s and early 1950s, the original Captain Marvel comics outsold Superman.The books contained stories of fantastic whimsy, and it was not unusual to see the hero interacting with a talking tiger or an evil worm with a radio.Shazam, the magic word that transformed the young Billy Batson into his superhero alter ego, still remains in the pop culture lexicon. (The word's an acronym, representing the mythical figures Captain Marvel draws his powers from. He has the wisdom of Solomon, the strength of Hercules, the stamina of Atlas, the power of Zeus, the courage of Achilles and the speed of Mercury.) But Captain Marvel has never really regained the creative spark or the popularity of the original series, which was created by writer Otto Binder and artist C.C. Beck.
Smith was surprised and pleased to get a call from DC editor Mike Carlin offering him the Captain Marvel property. "No other character would have caught my interest," Smith said. He's known for mixing humor, pathos and epic fantasy in Bone.Now he has the chance to bring that storytelling to Captain Marvel's world. Captain Marvel is full of colorful characters, and Smith's only condition for taking on the project was to be able to take the story outside the DC superhero universe. The Captain Marvel Family includes Batson's sister, Mary Marvel; an anthropomorphic tiger named Tawky Tawny; and the wizard, Shazam, who grants Billy Batson his powers.The villains include mad scientist Dr. Sivana and Mr. Mind, the worm-leader of the Monster Society of Evil.
"The story I want to tell is of an orphan boy who has no one, but by the end of the story has [found himself] a family," Smith said."A strange family of talking tigers and old wizards.Instead of Batson just defeating enemies, it's fun to tell an actual story of a mission he can fulfill."
Smith's story is a remake of a legendary Monster Society of Evil serial that ran in the original Captain Marvel comics for two years, from 1943 to 1945.The legend of this particular serial has been kept alive by comics historians/creators such as Jules Feiffer and Jim Steranko."Comic books traditionally have been this series of endless adventures," Smith said. "We're in an interesting time in comics with the graphic novel form. As graphic novels are coming into their own, I think this would be the perfect time to revisit this first long-form story."
Smith said he's also very much attracted to storytelling techniques from the early days of comics books, pointing to the Monster Society of Evil story line, with its strange characters, cliffhangers and secret codes for the readers to decipher, as an example."Superheroes are the things that landed comics, made it a commercially viable medium," Smith said."What was fun about [those classic stories] were the simplicity, the adventure and a lot less realistic stuff."
But Smith said he also intends to update the Captain Marvel stories a bit and bring some of that fun to the 21st century. "My goal was to do a really fun adventure story," Smith said, "and I'm having a really good time."
