Earth's Mightiest Mortals: The Shazamily Appreciation 2023

[Digifiend]

She never took a new codename in New 52, so everyone was still calling her that.

The justification for her using the name again is that Wonder Woman called her a marvel. She used the name with Wonder Girl's equipment (having given up the Shazam powers to save Diana's life, the reason for her praise) then got her powers back at the end of that story.

[justinslot]

I mean however they justify it, I'm all for it! "Mary Shazam" was never a good idea.

So of all the Marvel Family only Mary openly claims the Marvel mantle in the current continuity, correct? Billy is Wizard's Name, Freddy is Wizard's Name Jr. For me personally Mary going by Mary Marvel is more important than Billy/Freddy going by Captain Marvel...Mary's my favorite, but also I think DC has a stronger claim on the Mary Marvel name (only ever used by Mary) than they do Captain Marvel (used by any number of pretenders post Big Red Cheese.)

[Digifiend]

Billy's currently just The Captain. Freddy's depowered.

[justinslot]

Thanks for the update. Ah, the Captain...I believe that was what Steve Rogers called himself for awhile when he was sick of being Captain America.

[Digifiend]

Yeah, and it's also the name of a foul mouthed member of Marvel's Nextwave team.

[signalman112]

CC Beck.

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[Frontier]

CC Beck.

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The old gang .

[Timber Wolf-By-Night]

CC Beck.

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Who or what is the giant frog creature?

[K7P5V]

Always has been, if you ask me .

Indeed. Couldn't agree more

[signalman112]

America will be celebrating it's birthday this 4 Day Weekend.

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[Frontier]

America will be celebrating it's birthday this 4 Day Weekend.

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Wise words Cap .

[HsssH]

Recent Morrison's newsletter has annotations for Shazam's Multiversity one-shot and an explanation for Mary's portrayal in Final Crisis:

When Mary says – ‘I’D LOVE TO MEET ME FROM ANOTHER UNIVERSE. I WONDER IF I’D BE VERY DIFFERENT at all…’ - it’s a wry reference to the ‘main Earth’ Mary Marvel as she appeared in Final Crisis.

The creators of the weekly Countdown series that preceded Final Crisis introduced a running thread where sweet, innocent Mary Marvel is turned to the dark side by Black Adam and equipped with a shiny black mini-skirted costume a new dedication to wickedness and a new name, Black Mary. The creators of Countdown intended to have her redeemed but we decided to explore some of the implications of a bad Mary Marvel.

For me at least, the sexing up of Countdown’s Black Mary Marvel had a real-world analogue in the sexualisation of Disney starlets like Britney, Christina, Miley, and the rest. Presented to the audience as wholesome kid entertainers and role models for girls – then given a ‘dirty’ makeover to attract a whole new following…

Final Crisis showed the horrific, corrupting onslaught of a cosmic suicide capitalism - ‘WORK! CONSUME! DIE DIE DIE FOR DARKSEID!’ - that reduces all life to its market value, to commodity, no more than the disposable instruments of a singular tyrannical will to power.

In that vein, we twisted the Countdown plot thread further to reveal a Mary Marvel possessed by Jack Kirby’s torture god Desaad, (standing in for middle aged male comic book writers or music execs), and pornified into a monstrous caricature of cosmetically and surgically enhanced synthetic femininity. Her hair was chopped down to stubble and a few dyed purple tufts as a call-back to those ‘crazy Britney’ headlines, hinting at the toll on her mental health such performative saleable sexuality might imply (there are also deliberate echoes of Mary Marvel’s UK counterpart Kid Marvelman, who became in the hands of Alan Moore the apocalyptic and terrifying epitome of the superhero kid gone bad trope).

The savage satire sounded great on paper, but in the end, I felt bad about putting Mary Marvel through all that just to make a point about people putting her through all that.

[signalman112]

Punch out-Standees from the Golden Age.

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[Frontier]

Punch out-Standees from the Golden Age.

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Just missing Mary!

[Digifiend]

Did she exist yet? I don't see a copyright year there but the other heroes should be a clue.