Captain Marvel, or as he is more popularly known “SHAZAM”, is the character I have chosen to expound upon coming off of my short post about sidekicks because in many ways Captain Marvel is among the best representations we get for Legacy in superhero stories. I will argue and identify that Captain Marvel has grown into a character that represents more than any other character- the mantle of the “next generation” of heroes, the true point of view character for the Capeshit fan to come, that I am not alone in this view, and that several other cogent and prescient authors have identified that Captain Marvel is the intended stepping off point for the next generation of Superheroes when the current (forever) crop have retired and died out (They wont/cant/dont as Kingdom Come shows).
Billy Batson, variably the unfortunate orphan or fortunate adoptee, gains the six magic powers from the Wizard Shazam who deems him worthy either by his suffering or by his potential for virtue. Billy is a child, and uses these powers to transform into the fully grown adult Captain Marvel (or Shazam) who is every bit the superhero anyone would want to be.
His powers are as follows, descriptions have been directly ripped from Wikipedia and edited to my purposes:
The Wisdom of Solomon: grants Captain Marvel several abilities, including perfect memory, strategic combat skills, exceptional mathematical aptitude, charisma in interpersonal interactions, limited clairvoyance for acquiring arcane knowledge and intuitive insights, as well as a natural fluency in all languages. Unlike some other powers, this is considered an active one a champion must channel to activate.
The Strength of Hercules: This bestows on Billy an exceptional level of superhuman strength. He gains the ability to exert immense physical power, surpassing the capabilities of ordinary individuals. With this heightened strength, he can effortlessly lift and manipulate objects of tremendous weight, overpower adversaries with ease, and deliver devastating blows in combat.
The Stamina of Atlas: The stamina attribute from Atlas enables Billy to maintain his empowered state for an extended period without any time limitations. Additionally, the empowerment provides Billy with sustenance, eliminating the need for eating, sleeping, and even breathing. As a result, Billy can operate at peak efficiency, unaffected by the physiological requirements that typically apply to ordinary individuals. This extraordinary stamina allows him to fully focus on his heroic duties without the distractions or limitations associated with physical sustenance.
Power of Zeus: Zeus’s “power” attribute facilitates the transformation that grants Billy access to the full range of his powers, including the ability to shoot bursts of electricity and lightning. He also possesses a limited gift of teleportation, allowing him to effortlessly travel to and from the Rock of Eternity with a single thought. Notably, the Power of Zeus empowers him with the potential to use magic and cast spells. This power is considered the most difficult, requiring the most study, focus, and discipline.
The Courage of Achilles: grants Billy peak physical defenses, rendering him nearly invulnerable. This heightened level of invulnerability provides significant protection against physical harm. Additionally, the empowerment grants Billy resistance to various elements, including heat, force, disease, and the effects of aging. This attribute allows him to withstand extreme conditions and maintain his health and vitality against formidable challenges.
The Speed of Mercury: grants Billy super speed, enhanced reflexes, motor skills, and flight, enabling him to move at incredible speeds, react swiftly, perform precise maneuvers, and soar through the air.
So, Captain Marvel’s powers bring him to the highest of physical, mental, and moral states- he is in every way the “idea” of the superhero to a 10 year old boy- who in comics must be as intelligent or more intelligent than their readership and communicate in similar language and with similar symbols to the reading audience.
Captain Marvel has (compared to Batman or other such characters) a pretty obtuse secret identity situation. Captain Marvel and Billy Batson are two different characters (for the most part) and have different powers and abilities. Billy Batson can go places and talk to people that Captain Marvel cannot, but Captain Marvel has the wisdom of Solomon and the strength of Hercules, which Billy Batson certainly does not. There is at times some bleed between the two characters, I will reference an animated show, Young Justice, (animated shows are the ONLY exposure a huge part of the Capeshit audience has for their material- I don’t have a problem with this, if you can’t already tell I think most of modern comics is a waste of your money, time, and energy.) and say that in that show Captain Marvel has the personality of Billy Batson even in his powered form, which I think works fine for the dynamic of the show because the Team is a more mature group of kids than Captain Marvel is and are the audiences access point into events therein unfolding. Captain Marvel changes form in a giant crack of thunder after saying “SHAZAM” which is of course an Acronym of those who give him his power and also the name of the Wizard who directly chose him for the role. Captain Marvel changing form entirely with a simple utterance is the most direct wish-fulfillment for the young man reading comics who thinks throughout the day “Damn I wish I could just fly the fuck out of Math class”, Billy Batson really can.
Captain Marvel, and I will refer to him as Captain Marvel and not Shazam, is frequently depicted as the “goofier” alternative to other heroes, particularly opposite Superman as is the case in JLU (Justice League Unlimited). Whether because he is a kid on the inside (literally) or because his surroundings are that of a child, he was for a large part of his published history doing goofy stuff, I have no problem with this, just setting the scene.
Captain Marvel gets his moment in the sun in really Kingdom Come, which for those unfamiliar is a mandatory read. Drop this now and read Kingdom Come if you have not already its not long and its a picture book. In Kingdom Come Captain Marvel is the character upon whom things revolve by the end of the story, and ultimately he sacrifices himself in order to restore things to a more righteous and peaceful status quo. Ultimately in a meta sense this is somewhat dark, as we see that the parallelism in real life is that these “young” characters (Captain Marvel was published in like 1941 he is by no means a New character) are sacrificed at the altar of the forever-brand characters sticking around, but I digress. Captain Marvel has every power than Superman has, and one weakness that the Superman of that story doesn’t, which is youthful naivety, which is what makes him the perfect subject for the manipulations of Lex Luthor. But lets think for a second about Captain Marvel, he is tall, broad, black haired and clean shaven, his mighty fists rest assuredly on his waist and his cape billows just so in the ambient wind. Captain Marvel is what Billy Batson sees in Superman. So Captain Marvel really, is Billy Batson’s idea of Superman kaleidoscoped through the machinations of the Wizard Shazam into Earths Mightiest Mortal. “Shazam” has no static appearance and indeed none of the other characters who possess the power of Shazam ever are as mature or directly heroic looking as Captain Marvel is so clearly it must literally be the case that Billy Batson’s idea of the perfect man has some basis in his subconscious perception of that ideal, and sensibly we can draw the conclusion that the foundation of that is Superman.
So Captain Marvel is Superman+, how does this inform us going forward in thinking about him. It should tell us the following: When Captain Marvel is acting, he is acting with the foremost thought of: “What would Superman do?” which is a question you would logically think basically every DC hero would ask themselves, but actually a huge majority of DC heroes are in some way ideologically or aesthetically divorced from Superman-dom in a fundamental way that shouldn’t be violated without good reason.
Secondly, lets look at things in terms of chronology. Superman at least appears to be about 30 in most comics, certainly in all of his appearances alongside Captain Marvel, who is actually 10 years old. Billy Batson’s being 10 has no apparent bearing on his being Captain Marvel, meaning he will not lose the powers like Peter Pan or Codename Kids Next Door when he turns 18, so presumably he is Captain Marvel for life should he continue to be worthy of the powers. So, (Discounting Superboy, Superboy Prime, Supergirl, Mon-El, Power Girl, any and all Daxamites, any and all Kryptonians in the Phantom Zone and any or all variants of any previously listed who may cross over or already have crossed over from other realities because of the crap that is Crisis) Captain Marvel is really set up to be the Superman of the future. This I think, is the essential narrative note of Captain Marvel in Kingdom Come; that Captain Marvel is supposed to be the Superman of the world of Tomorrow, which is an essential reason Luthor both wants to and is able to corrupt him. It is sort of unclear whether or not “Captain Marvel” ages, Frank Miller seems to think so, per The Dark Knight Strikes Again (which is good, contrary to the haters) but I think Captain Marvel is the worldly manifestation of eternal powers guided by magic so I disagree.
I hate to delve into the space of power scaling because I think power scalers are morons who misunderstand fundamental things about the spaces they intrude on, but if Superman is getting smoked by Magic or a laser or whatever Justice League cartoon level shit is keeping him out of frame so Batman and the villain of the week can aura farm- where is Captain Marvel? Just as strong and fast, with none of the Kryptonite baggage. Watch season 2 episode 20 of Justice League Unlimited, make your own judgement.
I had a conversation with a peer Capeshit-head recently in which I discussed the above point, he brought up directly that Captain Marvel should really be the successor to the Man of Steel in the role of “Worldly protector who sees all of humanity as a brother” and I had the thought that this was definitely true and that in fact I think Captain Marvel in a similar way is also the logical inheritor to the role of Wonder Woman. Aside from receiving many of the powers which she also has or has some manifestation of by my estimation, Captain Marvel I would argue is also the type of character that I think is entirely lost in modern fiction because like Wonder Woman authors really don’t understand anything about the direction that the character needs to take, a direction I think is in the general area of being a character that gathers others under their banner by their undeniable virtues and their inherent connection to a higher sphere of being, in the sense of the DC Universe I mean this to say that Wonder Woman is connected to the Olympian realm, arguably the realm of the Fourth World, and the lower realm of magic that affects mortal lives. I think Captain Marvel is done a disservice in not being allocated a serious place alongside Wonder Woman and Doctor Fate- I have not read Justice League Dark recently enough to remember if he is on that team but if he was that is the sort of thing I would say is not enough of a statement regardless. The “Justice League Anything” is not enough, it needs to be a different thing and not just an ensemble comic.
How interesting would it be to explore how it is for Captain Marvel “growing up” in a world where Robin and Kid Flash are growing up in the same way. I don’t think Billy needs to be on the Teen Titans, but that is the sort of thing going on in the world while he is operating as a superhero in a world full of superheroes. Really, how well might he and Raven get along? (Watch out Beast Boy an even more annoying kid is coming to usurp you.) If Billy Batson turns 18 within a year or two of Dick Grayson turning 18, the two have spent about the same amount of time doing the hero thing, and Captain Marvel is never a sidekick! What does it look like and feel like for him to idolize Superman from a distance while being every bit as powerful as he is, with his own enemies who have their own agendas and courses of action!
I won’t go into much detail on the Shazam family here, I understand them to be an intrinsic part of Captain Marvel in modern comics going all the way back to the 40’s when he imparts some of his powers on others. To me this is even more idealizing of Superman. Superman, for all he can do, cannot make anyone else Kryptonian, he cannot equip them the way he is equipped to solve their problems. Captain Marvel can. He doesn’t just have to be an inspiration and a symbol of trust and hope he can literally give you lightning powers. This is not always a good idea as Mary Marvel sometimes demonstrates, but it’s something. I feel like I enjoy this part of Captain Marvel more as something that he has as an ability than I would probably enjoy being something that he constantly deals with as allies. There are like 12 Kryptonians on Earth, 6 Green Lanterns, 4 Flashes, and 5 Captain Marvels would truly just break a horizon for me that I can already hardly maintain. A rectified picture of the world of DC Comics is something I will produce eventually here, but it’s sort of an ongoing headcanon as these things tend to be. I am not sure how much I want to indulge post actual fanfiction here.
So where is Captain Marvel in the conversations about alternate future DC universes, where he is when people are discussing what needs to happen with a prospective “New Trinity”? Billy Batson is nowhere because no one knows how to handle him, and his movie certainly didn’t help his appeal with general audiences. Fuck the Rock, and the studio retards who greenlit anything after ZSJL.
Capeshit, and DC Comics in particular suffer from a plethora of characters who can never go anywhere to make room for characters that deserve the spotlight and fresh air. To answer my own question, Captain Marvel will never succeed Superman as protector of Earth because No One ever will. He will never succeed Wonder Woman as noble leader of organized Samaritans because No One ever will. Billy Batson will never have the opportunity to grow old and emulate his role model until he is the one to be emulated because No One ever will.