Forgotten Masterpiece: The Silencing of the SHAZAM Sayer

Here’s a strip from the past that even I have little information on. In fact, I don’t know where I got it from, where it might have seen print. Hopefully, some curious reader of this blog page will help us in that regard. But I saved copies of this amazing little two-page story when I came across it years ago, and having found them again, they’re too good to let languish until I can dig up more concrete information about them.

ADDITION: As usual, Kurt Busiek has the answer. He writes in the comments:

This was done for NATIONAL LAMPOON but never published by them.

It surfaced in an issue of the TwoMorrows ALTER EGO, and in THE SOMEDAY FUNNIES as well.

This short little two-pager by Denny O’Neil and C.C. Beck (with some assistance from Don Newton) is a fictionalized account of the end of Captain Marvel back in 1953 and heralds his return to publication in 1972. But it isn’t simply a promotional item–I can’t see DC being on board with some of what is depicted here (to say nothing of the Captain America cameo.) But whatever it was done for, it’s an amazing little piece of work, one that’s got more charm and genuineness to it than much of the 1970s revival of SHAZAM would end up having.

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