Wednesday, November 13, 2024
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Captain Marvel has gone through quite a few changes since his early Golden
Age days - he's even become an entirely different character! Actually, several
different characters.
It all started with Fawcett's Captain Marvel, of course. Billy Batson said the magic word, "Shazam!" and turned into the powerful Captain Marvel. The success of the character quickly spun into a whole family of characters, including Mary Marvel, Captain Marvel, Jr., and others. The books were all top sellers in their day. Then DC Comics famously filed suit for the character's similarity to Superman. In fact, it was three lawsuits, Roscoe Fawcett told writer P.C Hamerlinck (in an interview published in TwoMorrow's Fawcett Companion).
"We won the first, lost the second, won the third...but then there was a problem. One artist, I don't know who, took either a page or a panel from Superman comics and traced it exactly...and simply inserted Marvel where Superman was. That killed us. We settled out of court. We paid them $400,000. The settlement said that we do not admit to copying Superman but promised never to publish Captain Marvel ever again," Fawcett said in the interview.
So Captain Marvel disappeared from the stands, seemingly forever.
While there were no Captain Marvel comics being published featuring the original, Marvel Comics debuted a whole new Captain Marvel character in 1967. (This wasn't the first or last time Marvel had used a "deceased" character's name, a practice that started with their own Human Torch in Fantastic Four #1). This alien warrior, named "Mar-Vell," appeared in his own title and other Marvel publications over the years, even spinning off a character of his own, Ms. Marvel.
Think it's confusing? We've barely gotten started!
DC acquired the rights to Captain Marvel, the original that is, and began publishing Shazam! in 1973. They couldn't call the title Captain Marvel because of Marvel's claim on it (sometime during the years of not being published, a trademark had lapsed). The original Captain Marvel began appearing in DC Comics and was eventually integrated into their general continuity, but always under titles derived from the word "Shazam" such as Power of Shazam!
In 1982, as the first of their then-new line of Marvel Graphic Novels, Marvel published The Death of Captain Marvel. It featured their character succumbing to cancer. Time for the original to get the title back? Wrong!
Marvel quickly replaced their version with a new version, an African-American female, who was featured in many of their different titles, including The Avengers. She never quite made the ranks of their most popular characters, though, and has since been replaced by Genis, the son of Mar-Vell.
All of this is just the long way of coming to this point:
Bowen Designs, nearing the end of their wonderful run of Marvel Comics mini-busts, has released these three mini-busts - sculpted by the incredible Randy Bowen. One is based on Mar-Vell's green and white costumed appearance from the '60s, one from his later red and blue costume, and one featuring Genis, that doesn't differ greatly from his '70s predecessor father costume-wise, but features a blue face and silver-white hair. At 5 ½" tall, each bust is fully painted and ready to display, and features the hero with gritted teeth and arms up in a battle-ready stance.
m e o f t h e
i t e m s M a n i o n ' s h a s a v a i l a b l e g o f o r u p t o s i x t i m e s t h e i r a m o u n t a t t o y
s h o w s . a t i v e e f f o r t s , p a r t i c u l a r i n c o n j u n c t i o n w i t h a r t i s t M i c h a e l A v o n
O e m i n g . < / i > < b r > < b r > < i > M a r k W h e a t l e y i s k n o w n i n t e r n a t i o n a l l y a s a n a c c o m p l i s h e d
i l l u s t r a t o r , w r i t e r , e d i t o r , a n d p u b l i s h e r . H e h a s w o n t h e I n k p o t , S p e a k e a s y a n d
M u c k e r a w a r d s a n d b e e n n o m i n a t e d f o r t h e H a r v e y a n d I g n a t z a w a r d s f o r h i s c o m i c
b o o k a n d p u l p c r e a t i o n s t h a t i n c l u d e < / i > B r e a t h t a k e r , R a d i c a l D r e a m e r , M a r s ,
J i m g r i m < i > < / i > a n d t h e D e v i l a t L u d d < i > a n d r Of The Gods:
Color Saga trade back in the winter. But in that case we let John do exactly
what he wanted with the color. This time around Mike and I got to talking about
the look we had always dreamed of for the series. Partially this was influenced
by my tour of Europe this past winter. In talking with European publishers it
had become clear that their taste in comics was very close to what Mike and I
like to do. With one exception. They weren't all that keen on the style of color
we were using on the Color Saga. And when Mike and I made a list of ideas
for the color, we found that we agreed with the Europeans! After that we decided
to make a drastic change in how the color for Hammer was done. That
didn't seem like such a big deal to Mike and me since we both have changed our
art styles like chameleons over the years. But John Staton has stuck to his
artistic vision from the beginning. And he found it very difficult to switch
approach under deadline. After watching John fight to make the style change for
several weeks, I finally stepped in and took on coloring myself. I established
the look of the scenes and then handed the remaining pages back to John. After
about two issues of this John got the idea and suddenly it was a race between
the two of us to the deadline. Ultimately the 151 pages took about six weeks for
the two of us to color.It all started with Fawcett's Captain Marvel, of course. Billy Batson said the magic word, "Shazam!" and turned into the powerful Captain Marvel. The success of the character quickly spun into a whole family of characters, including Mary Marvel, Captain Marvel, Jr., and others. The books were all top sellers in their day. Then DC Comics famously filed suit for the character's similarity to Superman. In fact, it was three lawsuits, Roscoe Fawcett told writer P.C Hamerlinck (in an interview published in TwoMorrow's Fawcett Companion).
"We won the first, lost the second, won the third...but then there was a problem. One artist, I don't know who, took either a page or a panel from Superman comics and traced it exactly...and simply inserted Marvel where Superman was. That killed us. We settled out of court. We paid them $400,000. The settlement said that we do not admit to copying Superman but promised never to publish Captain Marvel ever again," Fawcett said in the interview.
So Captain Marvel disappeared from the stands, seemingly forever.
While there were no Captain Marvel comics being published featuring the original, Marvel Comics debuted a whole new Captain Marvel character in 1967. (This wasn't the first or last time Marvel had used a "deceased" character's name, a practice that started with their own Human Torch in Fantastic Four #1). This alien warrior, named "Mar-Vell," appeared in his own title and other Marvel publications over the years, even spinning off a character of his own, Ms. Marvel.
Think it's confusing? We've barely gotten started!
DC acquired the rights to Captain Marvel, the original that is, and began publishing Shazam! in 1973. They couldn't call the title Captain Marvel because of Marvel's claim on it (sometime during the years of not being published, a trademark had lapsed). The original Captain Marvel began appearing in DC Comics and was eventually integrated into their general continuity, but always under titles derived from the word "Shazam" such as Power of Shazam!
In 1982, as the first of their then-new line of Marvel Graphic Novels, Marvel published The Death of Captain Marvel. It featured their character succumbing to cancer. Time for the original to get the title back? Wrong!
Marvel quickly replaced their version with a new version, an African-American female, who was featured in many of their different titles, including The Avengers. She never quite made the ranks of their most popular characters, though, and has since been replaced by Genis, the son of Mar-Vell.
All of this is just the long way of coming to this point:
Bowen Designs, nearing the end of their wonderful run of Marvel Comics mini-busts, has released these three mini-busts - sculpted by the incredible Randy Bowen. One is based on Mar-Vell's green and white costumed appearance from the '60s, one from his later red and blue costume, and one featuring Genis, that doesn't differ greatly from his '70s predecessor father costume-wise, but features a blue face and silver-white hair. At 5 ½" tall, each bust is fully painted and ready to display, and features the hero with gritted teeth and arms up in a battle-ready stance.
How was the Hammer portfolio received? Was that a fun project to work on? (And would you describe it for folks that might have missed it?)
Hammer Of The Gods: One Page Stories is a portfolio, but it is also a collection of stories all illustrated with a one-page illustration. It was fun. Mike sent me eight illustrations and didn't tell me much about them. I did my research into the Norse myths and came up with some dandy stories to explain the fascinating images that Mike created.
How did you end up at Image?
I kept saying, "I'm not a publisher." Perhaps the fact that I keep publishing books confuses people. But ultimately I prefer to create the books and leave it to others to get the books to market. And I believe the opportunities that are opening up for the comic market are demanding far m
