Captain Marvel Cartoon

Posted by Don Markstein

The endless reaches of outer space can’t accommodate two completely different superheroes who bear the name Captain Marvel. By a stroke of cosmic luck, or perhaps just the vagaries of intellectual property law, both have made it into big-budget Hollywood movies within weeks of each other.

Fawcett Comics’ Captain Marvel debuted in Whiz Comics #2 (cover dated February 1940) as an attempt to capitalize on the success of DC’s Superman, who had just hit the big screen. The new character was a boy named Billy Batson who could transform into the powerful superhero by saying the magic word Shazam!

He had an archenemy called Doctor Sivana, and he battled alien creatures such as the Skrulls. Fawcett’s version of the character was an instant success, and he starred in his own series and also appeared in other Fawcett books such as Master Comics. But the superhero’s copyright holders at DC were seething, and in 1952 a storied lawsuit decided in their favor that Fawcett had to stop publishing the character.

In the modern era, Carol Danvers has inherited the mantle of the world’s greatest hero as Captain Marvel. She has become a key member of the Avengers, but she’s also worked closely with other teams such as the Starjammers, Guardians of the Galaxy and A-Force. She has even had a romantic relationship with War Machine.

An animated cartoon that never got off the ground was a proposed Captain Marvel series by Ben Bates, creator of Herobear and a longtime Marvel Animation staffer. The short included rough animation that would have been polished later had the project been approved. It featured an alternate version of the hero, whose costume was predominantly red with a yellow starburst logo on the chest and gold wristbands. Her power came from the mystical energies of Tornado (power), Hare (speed), Uncas (bravery) and Nature (wisdom).