BC: SHAZAM #35

And so we come to the end of the run of SHAZAM that I borrowed from my grade school buddy Donald Sims so many years ago. Or maybe we do. I’m honestly not certain after all of these years whether he had this final issue in his complete stack. If nothing else, I don’t recall it with the clarity that I do so many other issues from this run. But not being certain, I’ve opted to cover it here, just to finish out the run if nothing else. It’s likely that I did read this issue back in the day for all that I’m uncertain of that fact here in the present.

This was the second issue in new editor Jack C. Harris’s efforts to save the flagging fortunes of the title by discarding the artistic approach of emulating the style originated for the character during his Golden Age roots and instead to depict his modern day adventures in a contemporary style, one analogous to that used on the other DC super hero features of the era. Alan Weiss’s visuals in the issue before this one came as a bit of a shock to the system, so aggressively alien in approach were they to what had been done before. This second outing finds a better balance, however, by bringing on board an undersung artist of the period Don Newton. Newton had been an enormous fan of Captain Marvel in his fan days, as well as an associate of the character’s visual creator C. C. Beck. So his love was clear in how he set down his pages, even using a more contemporary style. The transition was also smoothed by having mainstay Kurt Schaffenberger ink this particular story. Newton would remain the go-to artist for the Marvel Family’s stories for the forseeable future.

The story picks up where the last issue left off: King Kull, the Beast-Man, had inadvertently escaped imprisonment at the Rock of Eternity and resumed his war against the human race. Returning after last issue’s adventure Captains Marvel and Junior are forced to save a string of cars that are plummeting earthward when the bridge they were passing over suddenly vanishes. What’s more, upon putting the cars on the ground, they find that they’ve all transformed into older models. It quickly becomes apparent that time is beginning to move in reverse. They quickly seek out Mary Bromfield, who has lost all memory of ever having been Marvy Marvel and trick her into accidentally transforming by saying SHAZAM. Then the trio head for the Rock of Eternity, reasoning that only there can they be certain that they themselves won’t be wound backwards out of existence by the reversed time.

On the Rock, the wizard Shazam is able to give the Marvel Family the lowdown on what’s been going on: how the backfire of Billy’s magic lightning off of Captain Nazi’s force-field last issue struck King Kull, shattering his chains. Since that time, the Beast-Man has descended into the underworld, where he’s devised some means of making time flow in reverse, intending to reset history back to the period when he and his kind ruled over the Earth. In order to prevent this, the Marvels will have to cross the River Styx and enter Hell themselves. Which, being the World’s Mightiest Mortals, they’re all absolutely ready to do.

But Charon, the ferryman, is insulted when the Marvels simply fly on past him rather than giving him a coin for passage, and so he sicks Cerberus, the many-headed Hellhound upon the Marvels to stop their flight. But working together, the three Marvels are a match for the demonic dog and are able to clobber him and descend into the pits of hell–which are rendered in the full page image you see above. But entrance isn’t so easy, as Mary is attacked by Furies, and Junior is grabbed by a colossal twin-headed dragon-man while the captain is tempted by a siren-like serpent-demon. But Captain Marvel observes that all of these entities seem to lose some of their potency whenever the three Marvels work together.

At this point, though, it’s time for the main event, and Satan himself appears. Junior flies to the attack, referencing a Golden Age story in which he’d defeated Satan in the past–writer Nelson Bridwell making sure no reader in 1978 thought he’s overlooked that thirty-year-old story. But Satan rebuffs him, telling Junior that when last they met, he was inhabiting the mortal form of Sabbac. But here, in his own realm, he’s a lot more powerful. But not so powerful that he can withstand the innate goodness of the three Marvels working co-operatively in unison, just as Cap worked out earlier.

From here, the wrap-up is pretty simple. In the space of just over a page, the Marvels track down King Kull in Hades and knock him out, destroying his time-reverser and restoring the world to its proper chronology. But as the Marvels depart, Satan vows vengeance upon them all. But said vengeance wouldn’t be taking place in the pages of SHAZAM, as this was the final issue of the title. Rather, a final page blurb alerts readers to the fact that SHAZAM was moving into the pages of WORLD’S FINEST COMICS as a regular feature, and that’s where ongoing plot threads such as Billy Batson’s nefarious uncle Ebenezer Batson attempting a hostile takeover to Station WHIZ would hereafter be picked up. I don’t recall reading this final blurb, which is partly why I’m not certain that Don Sims had this issue–I already knew that Captain Marvel and company were in WORLD’S FINEST, but this notice feels like something that I’d recall.

By luck of timing, the SHAZAMAIL letters page in this final issue included that year’s Statement of Ownership, which can give us an inking of just how well the series had been performing a year previously. According to the numbers, SHAZAM was selling 99.962 copies on a print run of 303,559, giving it an efficiency rating of a dismal 33%. In essence, DC was literally printing three copies of SHAZAM in order to sell one, with the others still being printed, shipped and then returned for credit and mulched. A wildly inefficient system, and the whole reason why the emerging Direct Sales market was such a godsend to publishers.

This final issue also included an edition of the Daily Planet promotional page, which I adored. This early on, it didn’t carry a Fred Hembeck cartoon strip, but Bob Rozakis was already in place with his Ask the Answer man column in which he attempted to answer simple questions sent in by the readership. The big news that week was the release of SHOWCASE #100, a book that I wouldn’t get to read for close to 40 more years thanks to the fact that my 7-11 had quietly stopped stocking any comics that deviated from the basic format, anything that was extra-sized.