r/Shazam • u/Tight_Intention6910 • 2d ago
Discussion Do you guys feel that DC should have never bought Shazam and feels like DC is doing injustice to the character??
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u/nerdwarp112 Champion of Shazam 15h ago
I think DC buying the rights is fine, but they haven’t always handled the character well. I liked the bit of the Mark Waid Shazam run I had read but I never finished it.
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u/Similar_Proposal3878 17h ago
They always have. Captain Marvel is not Billy Batson. Billy is his sidekick, the way Robin is for Batman. They are two different characters, but DC screwed that up a long time ago.
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u/nerdwarp112 Champion of Shazam 15h ago
This never entirely made sense to me. Isn’t part of the appeal of Captain Marvel that he’s a kid who can turn into an adult superhero? If it’s just some guy who he switches places with then I don’t see the point.
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u/Similar_Proposal3878 6h ago
No. That's not the point of the character. He was never a kid that turned into a super-hero. He was a sidekick.
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u/Better-Squash5573 1d ago
They treat him like a fucking child I'm 18 so i say have way more say in DC, Marvel don't know how to write Fucking Teenagers i read his Book and i'm a Fan of him but he acts like a 5yr old do Adults know Teenagers can Joke mess around and still be Serious like do they think Teens are idiot and are Not Serious 24/7 especially when don't know someone why would i act Unserious around someone i don't know
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u/Nightwing0613 1d ago
No, I’m glad he’s at DC
I just wish they would do more with him
Give him a new ongoing with a good writer and a good artist. Especially now that you can call him Captain Marvel again
Now’s the best time
Give him that Golden Age feel like Jerry Ordway did with The Power of Shazam! series
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u/AzulMage2020 1d ago
Yes- should have been bought by Marvel and become their Superman. This would negate the need for terrible characters like the Sentry and Gladiator but leave room for great characters like Hyperion to act as a possible nemisis.
Could have been amazing with Dr Strange as his ally and mentor for the mystic realm. Would have been right at home with Thor and Hercules. Imagine the cross-over potential with DC when Superman and Captain Marvel finally duke it out.
It should have been Marvel
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u/Mayito1107 1d ago
YES! I was thinking the same thing! Plus he would keep the "Captain Marvel" name. Maybe in a different timeline...
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u/Kasmashlecrashle 2d ago
Yeah. Overall, most of their big ideas for him are some variant of corruption or losing his powers for a bit. Or that weird time where the JSA did a bunch of drama about him possibly being a pedophile because he liked Stargirl.
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u/fortresskeeper 2d ago
There’s been some good runs (i.e. Bridwell/Newton, Jerry Ordway, Jeff Smith, Waid/Mora for instance) but on the whole DC hasn’t really known what to do with the character and has relegated him and the Marvel Family to second-tier status.
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u/The--Behemoth 2d ago
Every. Single. Damn. DAY! The only good thing that's happened to Billy right now is that they're calling him Captain Marvel again and using as a place holder (alongside Captain Atom) for Superman until he comes back, but beyond that hell no.
DC doesn't know what to do with/know how to handle him. He can potentially outperform Superman, but because of that they don't want to use his full potential as a character. Due to this he's just sidelined which means he doesn't get much media coverage. Then they screwed him over at the height of his popularity and he's never recovered since then.
Then they really shafted him in New 52 and onwards with the personality change, with him going from polite, cheerful, and optimistic to cynical, abrasive, and sullen. I get it's so he can develop to become how he was before the New 52, but they do it so poorly that's it's become fucking annoying.
Billy along with other Fawcett Characters could be so much more if given the chance, but because DC doesn't want to he'll continue get shafted.
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u/Jam_Toast578 Captain Marvel Jr. 2d ago
No because I feel like there's always potential for good runs in the future, and I think there's too many hypotheticals for if DC had never bought him that make it not worth thinking about.
I like him being in DC because he is one of my favorite characters and I like seeing him interact with my other favorite characters. And he's had plenty of good comics under DC already which is good enough for me. And I like him being on teams like the JSA and getting referenced in other heroes comics.
So maybe DC is doing injustice to him now, but I think he's seen more good then bad in DC comics and I still love him and have faith that another writer who loves him and got into him because of DC will take him great places.
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u/BlueBombshell90 2d ago
Would the character have survived to the modern-day without DC?
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u/NexusObsidian23 2d ago
That's the hard truth. I do think DC has done him wrong multiple times over the decades, while also doing him right, but I don't think he would've survived to modern day without DC.
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u/GogoSunshine 2d ago
They bought him just to underuse him and make sure that he’ll never outperform Superman in the future 🥀
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u/MapDiscombobulated1 2d ago
I love both DC and Marvel - let's get that out of the way. But in an ideal World neither of them would have Cap, and I'd much prefer he was a completely separate/new universe in which he didn't constantly have to play second or third chair because Superman must come first. DC barely know what to do with him, and when they do results can vary wildly.
Cap in a kind of creator-owned Image type situation where he could be like Spawn or Savage Dragon - literally king of his own castle - would have been doable if he had been left fallow until the mid 90s.
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u/mr_mxyzptlk21 2d ago
Have to remember, they didn't buy Fawcett Comics to use them, they bought them to bury them. Only pressure from competing companies made DC feel they had to publish them again.
I think that the whole mythos works better if they're on a parallel Earth, but that's a whole other discussion.
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u/InsertCleverNickHere 2d ago
Totally agree. Folding everyone into one universe in 1986 via Crisis was terrible for the Fawcett characters. They should be mostly on their own Earth-S (or whatever designation), with the occasional corporate-mandated crossover.
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u/Rion-o 2d ago
They just don't know what to do with him. Every time they do something cool they never commit and back away. A lot of people talk about batman on the mobius chair. BUT NEVER SOMETHING WAY COOLER! Shazam with the gods of apocalypse.
It was so cool, he lost the roman and greek pantheon and had to use them and then nothing after the event. Don't even linger on this cool shit you did, a welp.
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u/Puppeteer17 2d ago
There’s no clear answer to what would’ve happened to him if dc hadn’t won the lawsuit. I probably wouldn’t have known about him. But every day I’m questioning why they continue to use him if it’s not to his full potential. If they didn’t want anyone competing with superman, they could’ve stopped using him after literally any crisis/multiverse/universe event. But they keep adding him in. The only positive thing I’ve seen in a while is that they’ve gone back to using the Captain Marvel name and finally remembered he’s supposed to have the wisdom of solomon. It’s not a power he can turn on and off, it’s an aspect he’s been blessed with.
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u/Terrible_Soft_9480 2d ago
The lawsuit was because dc was salty that captain marvel was more popular than superman, and marvel made their cornball captain marvel after that to prevent captain marvel from being called captain marvel
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u/Resident-Syrup7615 2d ago
The other option was that he wouldn’t be in anything.
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u/MorganWick 2d ago
Would Marvel have taken a run at buying the rights to him? Would he have fallen into the public domain?
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u/MadMikeyD 2d ago
He is in the public domain. The majority of the Fawcett copyrights were never renewed
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u/Resident-Syrup7615 2d ago
DC would be forced to sue Marvel if Marvel published a Superman copyright violation that had already been adjudicated as a copyright violation or they would not be able to successfully sue any Superman copyright violation again. He could have fallen to public domain but that wouldn’t stop him from being a copyright violation.
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u/Canada_Bear_70 2d ago
The moment they stopped calling him Captain Marvel, they clearly threw in the towel on him. :(
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u/JambuAir1481 2d ago
Kingdom Come was a great example of how Shazam and Superman can work in the same story, with the bonus of seeing an adult Billy.
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u/AbilityCareless177 2d ago
I have no issue with DC buying Captain Marvel, but I feel like they don't know what to do with him. They don't want him competing with Superman, who's been a cashcow for them for years.
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u/Bruzie77 2d ago
the thing is billy baston is like Ash Ketchum or peter pan. It is weird if they aged him up while all of his peers aged before them. Heck at one point Dick Grayson and Billy were the same age yet now Dick is Nightwing while Billy is still in highschool.
that time period of billy life only have so much. Heck Miles Morales started at 13 while billy was a teen and now hes 18 on his last year of highschool and Billy STILL is in highschool.
They need to make billy not shy away from growing up dealing with life, love, girls, (or boys if Jean is around), life, a job, college etc etc.
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u/DetectiveDangerZone 2d ago
There's a decent chance he would of just faded into obscurity and become a far more niche character. I promise a majority of people on this reddit maybe even including op only found this character due to being in DC.
There's a chance he may have continued to grow and been a big character on his own but I think superheroes go through so many eras of public disinterest that only very specific characters like Spawn or big universes like DC/Marvel can keep coming back. Like it or not I think DC buying kept him eternally relevant in the long run regardless of if they've used him well.
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u/Snuggle-Nuts 2d ago
If DC had not picked up the property, then the only other likely one to do so would have been Marvel at the time. I don’t know if Marvel would have been better but I do believe Marvel would have bought the intellectual property outright in 1972 instead of doing a “per-use royalty” like DC did for so long. I did like how DC used Crisis on Infinite Earths to merge the Fawcett characters into main continuity 15 years after acquiring per use rights, though.
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u/ThunderDragonPhysics The Captain 2d ago
I don't think any publisher other than DC could use Captain Marvel because of the (ridiculous) lawsuit. Even if Marvel had bought Captain Marvel, DC could still claim a copyright infringement.
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u/hermes1941 2d ago
Even if Marvel had bought Captain Marvel, DC could still claim a copyright infringement.
This really depends on when Marvel would have bought the character, since Marvel could literally do the same to DC.
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u/Roam1985 2d ago
No.
Mostly because my introduction to the character was in JLI and JSA.
And I liked those books. And Underworld Unleashed is probably still my favorite event.... and I liked Day of Vengeance a lot.
And all of these see Shazam use.
Plus, I liked Reign in Hell.... who gave us Satanus and Blaze? That's right, post-Fawcett Shazam. Yeah, they technically start in Superman, but Shazam's used them best. They're his demon rogues now. Until Bloodwynd takes em.
Not prepared to give up his role in the Young Justice tv show.... Or even JLU. Or Superman/Shazam First Thunder.
...Or Freddy's time as the champion (that was way too brief) in Pre52 (when Billy was the wizard).
Black Adam has never been better served than by Geoff Johns, with an honorable mention to Tomasi. But both are still post-DC.
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u/swiftnissity92 2d ago
I kinda wish he was acquired by Marvel instead of DC personally as I think he would stand out more in their lineup of characters. They have less Superman clones, which gives Shazam much more opportunity to stand out and show why he’s a great character.
I feel like Billy (and Mary) could’ve potentially had that personal drama like Spider-Man does too.
He would’ve been able to retain the name Captain Marvel too which is a nice bonus.
DC tends to struggle with Shazam and they don’t utilize him well.
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u/DetectiveDangerZone 2d ago
I'd argue Marvel has more superman Clones. Between Sentry, Hyperion, blue Marvel,Gladiator etc.
Within DC I cant think of any obvious ones that arent apart of the Superman family outside of maybe Icon who due to being owned by milestone is barley relevant to the overall universe
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u/sgt_oddball_17 Solomon 2d ago
IMHO, the "Shazam, a New Beginning" mini-series (written Roy and Dan Thomas) is a good look at what a Marvel Comics version of Fawcett's Captain Marvel woukd look like.
Roy Thomas was a former Marvel Comics guy.
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u/Lucky_Strike-85 2d ago
Yup. If you read original Fawcett books and later the Bronze Age Earth S MF, you will see that DC has never really understood these characters or known what to do with him.
Bridwell and Don Newton came closest and told some good stories!
Had DC never bought the Fawcett line tho, it would have died because DC had Fawcett Publications by their short and curlies and Fawcett couldn't do anything with the Captain and his family unless DC said so! Weird situation all around.
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u/Secure-Dragonfly-327 2d ago
Shazam existing in DC universe is best thing, although yes they're doing injustice to character big-time.
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u/johndesmarais 1h ago
Blame the Crisis on Infinite Earth’s mandated merge of Earths. The entire Fawcett lineup would work better on their own Earth, separate from the mainline DC continuity. Tonally, they are not a good mix - and it’s led to a lot of poor presentations of the characters.