BC: SHAZAM #10

The cover to this next issue of SHAZAM, which I borrowed along with the rest of the compete run of the title from my grade school friend Donald Sims, presaged changes that were coming to the series. For the first time, the cover image isn’t the work of the character’s co-creator C. C. Beck but rather the appealing work of Bob Oksner. As we’ve spoken about before, Beck was having increasingly contentious disagreements with DC editor Julie Schwartz about the quality of the stories he was being asked to illustrate, and with the book not being a runaway best-seller, the point was approaching where the two would part company. After all, why put up with such a situation when there were other creators who would be equally adept at drawing the adventures of the World’s Mightiest Mortal? Oksner had done a boatload of humor comics over the years, and he hits this cover illustration with skills well sharpened by that experience.

The opening story in this issue is one that Beck refused to illustrate, sending it back to Schwartz with a note saying that he thought it was stupid. And it’s difficult to argue with him on this point. As we’ve talked about earlier, it was apparently difficult for Schwartz and his writers, Elliot S! Maggin in this instance, to give gravitas to the assignment and take it seriously as a work of craft, even though it was targeting a younger audience. There’s a subdued feeling of disdain that runs through all of these early SHAZAM issue, like the creators involved feel like they should be working on something more substantiative and think less of the readers for being interested in this pablum. A self-fulfilling prophesy, ultimately, but one that appears to have been in effect. They didn’t entirely get the appeal of the golden age Captain Marvel stories.

The story concerns Captain Marvel coming to the aid of a group of alien vegetables from the planet Salada whose spaceship has broken down, stranding them on Earth. They need to earn money to pay for replacement parts, but everybody they approach in this strange world runs in terror, thinking them the vanguard of an alien invasion. Captain Marvel himself doesn’t happen to have the $200,000 the equipment will cost, but he helps the plant people to earn it by co-starring with them in a monster movie. Beck wasn’t wrong, this entire story is exceedingly dumb and juvenile, and Vince Colletta’s haphazard inks don’t do Oksner any favors here.

Things look up, though, in the second story in this issue. By this point, SHAZAM had dispensed with the reprint material (which had reliably been the best stuff in each issue) in favor of going all-new with stories of other players within the Marvel Family pantheon. This issue stars the Captain’s sister Mary Marvel in her first solo outing in this new era. It was written by E. Nelson Bridwell, who had been a huge fan of the Fawcett Captain Marvel and so understood the boundaries of the assignment better. Also, artist Bob Oksner got to ink his own work here, which presented him at his best, and he gave Mary a cute 1970s makeover that made her very appealing. Oksner was known for drawing pretty girls.

The tale is only six pages long, though, and relatively straightforward: while serving as the Grand Marshall of the Thanksgiving Day parade, Mary captures a trio of bank robbers who at one point attempt to escape by untethering the colossal Mary Marvel parade balloon and using it to fly to safety. It isn’t much, but it’s attractively drawn and it takes the situations seriously, at least at the harmeless level that they’re being pitched at.

Nelson also wrote the final story in this issue, which was illustrated by C.C. Beck. I can’t help but feel that this was a combination that might have solved everybody’s problems, Beck’s in particular, has the pair been allowed to steadily collaborate on the series. But while Nelson would increasingly be prevailed upon more and more for Captain Marvel stories, Beck was just about at the end of his tether and ready to walk, so it never came to pass. This was, in fact, Beck’s final story illustrating the character that’s he’d helped to come up with and illustrated throughout his storied history. Not a bad way to go out, but not a moment of high triumph either.

The story brings back Aunt Minerva, one of the Big Red Cheese’s foes from the past. She’s an old lady criminal whose had five husbands, each of whom suffered an unfortunate fatality, and she’s interested in making Captain Marvel her sixth. Here, she hired Osky the Ox and Pretty-Puss Pete to eliminate the World’s Mightiest Mortal–the one who does so will get a valuable reward. (I can’t help but wonder if Osky and Pete were a reference to Bob Oksner and Pete Costanza, both of whom would work on the series.) But there’s very little they can do to the impervious Captain Marvel, and when they discover that the prize for their efforts was going to be Minerva’s hand in marriage, the criminal duo is only too happy that Marvel captured them and spoiled their plans.