BC: SHAZAM #9

I was continuing to work my way through the stack of issues of SHAZAM that I had borrowed from my buddy Donald Sims that comprised a complete run of the series. But issue #9, changes were starting to take place. First off, following the prior issue’s all-reprint format, from this point forward the book would be all-new, relegating any future reprints to 100-Page Super-Spectaculars and the like. This issue also represented a slight break from what had become the pattern the series had fallen into with a story that was markedly more modern than most of what had been presented up to this time.

Nothing much seemed to be different at the outset, however. The lead-off adventure is another one crafted by writer Denny O’Neil, who seemed to have a hard time taking the assignment seriously, much to the consternation of artist C. C. Beck. Beck’s history with Captain Marvel went all the way back to the character’s first appearance, and he was growing more and more unhappy about the treatment of the Big Red Cheese and by extension his own legacy. He complained loudly about the quality of the scripts that he was being given, and also attempted to submit at least one story of his own–only for editor Julie Schwartz to soundly reject it. And it’s difficult to argue the point. SHAZAM was a very silly, very juvenile comic book lacking in the specific brand of whimsey that had characterized the feature’s best days in the 1940s.

This opener is just dopey rather than whimsical or satiric. In it, Captain Marvel’s for Mister Mind harnesses the power of all of the worms in the world into a devastating hate-projector developed by a helpful evil scientist. Even the World’s Mightiest Mortal can’t cope with the device directly. So instead, he seeds the clouds, causing it to rain and thus force the worms to the surface, breaking their accumulated concentration until he can capture their leader Mister Mind. Apparently not wanting to bother with coming up with a reason, Denny once again has Mister Mind tease Marvel with the secret of how he survived his demise in the electric chair at the end of his first storyline back in 1945. As that was almost thirty years before, I can’t imagine that much of the existing audience for SHAZAM was being kept up nights wondering about this point.

The next story, though, was the gold in this particular issue, and it’s been reprinted a number of times over the years. Artist Dave Cockrum was one of the growing superstars of that era, and he’d had an affinity for the stories of Captain Marvel Jr. and especially the artwork of the character’s primary illustrator in the past, Mac Raboy. So Dave relished the opportunity to draw a Captain Marvel Junior story of his own, and he did a fine job on it. Junior’s stories had always been depicted in a more commercially realistic manner than those of the older Captain, so Cockrum’s work here followed suit. It wouldn’t have looked out of place in SUPERMAN or any other mainstream DC super hero title of the period. That right there was a big difference.

The story by Elliot S! Maggin is only five pages long, and it’s as dopey as everything else in the magazine. but Cockrum’s sharp visualizations make it all come together in a polished way. It’s all about Freddy Freeman’s newsstand being stolen by a gang of high-tech metal-ore smugglers who are cash-rich enough that they can afford a high-tech spaceship but who are stealing elevators and the like to melt down for a profit. Junior takes care of them in no time flat, and is rewarded for his efforts with a brand new newsstand made out of plastic rather than wood and metal.

The final story in the issue is also by Elliott, and it’s back to form, a dopey confection that treats its subject with a slight sneer. It’s all about Billy being called in to substitute for the part of a wizard in Station WHIZ’s Bonzo Show, which stars a chimpanzee. For the part, Billy wears a turban adorned with a massive gemstone. But when chaos erupts, Billy speaks his magic word–and the gemstone deflects the magic lightning to strike Bonzo, turning him into a Captain Marvel Chimp.

It takes Billy a few more tries to figure out what’s going wrong–in which time, Mr. Morris and Bonzo’s trainer Trixie are also transformed into Marvels. Eventually, Bonzo snatches the turban from off of Billy’s head which permits him to transform as normal, but he’s still got to chase down Bonzo and recover the turban so that he can change everybody back to normal. And that’s what he does. It’s an almost stakesless story that’s somehow neither funny nor engrossing. It’s just sort of there. Beck’s artwork on it is nice, but you can see precisely why he was growing so agitated. Additionally, it’s clear that SHAZAM, after surprisingly strong opening numbers (puffed up by speculators buying cartons of the first issue direct from the distributors as an investment) had begin to fall off sharply. Readers in 1973 just weren’t connecting with this version of the strip. If not for the licensing deals that led to the live action Saturday Morning SHAZAM television series, it’s likely that the book would have been cancelled like so many other short-run DC efforts of this time. But DC couldn’t change it, nor could they sell it–so it was time to start monkeying around with it a bit to see if it could be done better, as we’ll see when we look at additional issues.