Tagged: Captain Marvel

Happy 100th Birthday, C.C. Beck!

Happy 100th Birthday, C.C. Beck!

Born in 1910 in Zumbrota, Minnesota, Charles Clarence “C.C.” Beck started learning art via correspondence course before studying at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts and the University of Minnesota. Fawcett Publications hired him as a staff artist in 1933.

Initially Beck worked on pulp magazines, but when Fawcett started producing comic books in 1939 Beck was assigned to draw Whiz Comics, starring a character called Captain Thunder. The character’s name was changed before the first issue ever came out—to Captain Marvel.

Beck drew not only Whiz Comics but Spy Smasher and Ibis the Invincible, and in 1941 he set up his own studio in New York City—he later added a second location in Englewood, NJ, and oversaw artwork for most of the Marvel Family line while also producing commercial art. Fawcett discontinued its comic book line in the early 1950s and Beck was forced to close his studios in 1954.

After that he only worked on comics occasionally, though he did illustrate the first ten issues of DC’s Shazam! series (continuing Captain Marvel, whom DC had purchased from Fawcett). Beck retired in the 70s and moved to Florida, where he wrote an opinion column, “The Crusty Curmudgeon,” for The Comics Journal. He died in 1989.

Beck was inducted into the Eisner Hall of Fame in 1993 and the Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1997.

The Point – January 9th, 2009

The Point – January 9th, 2009

Someone leaked the identity of the new Doctor and British Bookies want to know Who, Captain Kirk lands on the internet and Captain Marvel (and Black Adam) land back on the shelf.

And Madballs, too? PRESS THE BUTTON and you’ll Get The Point!

 

 

And be sure to stay on The Point via iTunes - ComicMix or RSS!

 

‘Shazam’ movie ‘deader than a doornail’

‘Shazam’ movie ‘deader than a doornail’

Screenwriter John August describes the sequence of events that led up to, shall we say, the death of Captain Marvel the movie:

I took them at their (written) word and delivered what they said they wanted: a much harder movie, with a lot more Black Adam. This wasn’t “Big, with super powers” anymore. It was Black Adam versus Captain Marvel, with a considerable push into dark territory and liminal badlands like Nanda Parbat. It wasn’t the action-comedy I’d signed on to write, but it was a movie I could envision getting made. The producer and director liked it, and turned it in to the studio while I was in France.

By the time I got back, the project was dead.

By “dead,” I mean that it won’t be happening. I don’t think it’s on the studio’s radar at all. It may come back in another incarnation, with another writer, but I can say with considerable certainty that it won’t be the version I developed.

Whether this is from the internal shake-ups at New Line, or residual inertia from the writers’ strike, or just Hollywood silliness, is hard to gauge.

Colan: Visions of a Man without Fear Opens in San Francisco

Colan: Visions of a Man without Fear Opens in San Francisco

Gene Colan’s artistic career will receive the retrospective treatment as San Francisco’s Cartoon Art Museum presents Colan: Visions of a Man without Fear, opening November 15 and running through March 15, 2009.

On December 4, there will be a special opening reception with Gene and Adrienne Colan in attendance.

The exhibition will include over 40 examples from Colan’s long creative career, from his one and only story illustrated for legendary publisher EC Comics in 1952, through his career-defining work for Marvel Comics from the 1960s and 1970s on titles as diverse as Iron Man, Tomb of Dracula and Howard The Duck, to his notable run on DC Comics’ Batman in the 1980s, to his more recent efforts, including illustrations commissioned by his fans and his beautiful pencil artwork on titles such as Michael Chabon’s The Escapist, published by Dark Horse Comics.

Guest Curator Glen David Gold, author of the novel, Carter Beats the Devil, put the museum show together.  An exhibition catalog featuring high-quality reproductions of Colan’s artwork and essays from many of his most notable collaborators, including writers Stan Lee, Marv Wolfman, Roy Thomas and Steve Englehart, will be available at the Cartoon Art Museum prior to the exhibition’s opening reception on December 4.

For those unfamiliar with Gene “The Dean”, he was born in New York in 1926 and studied at the Art Students League of New York under illustrator Frank Riley and surrealistic Japanese painter Kuniashi. After a stint in the army, Colan’s official career in comics began in 1944 at Fiction House and Timely.

 

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ComicMix Six: Coolest Darkseid Moments

ComicMix Six: Coolest Darkseid Moments

The first sentient race of the DC Universe eventually became nearly-immortal beings of celestial energy, beings now known as the Old Gods. Eventually, there came a time when the Old Gods died and their planet, the "Third World", was destroyed. After many ages, the remnants of this world formed into two new planets, collectively called the "Fourth World." There was the peaceful and beautiful New Genesis, watched over by Izaya the Highfather, and the dark, desolate world of Apokolips, where lived the dark prince Uxas.

Uxas started a life of evil early on. When his brother Drax attempted to master a cosmic energy known as the Omega Force, Uxas decided he wanted the power for himself. In one fell swoop, he disrupted Drax’s plans, becoming master of the Omega Force and leaving his brother for dead. With his new power, Uxas renamed himself Darkseid the Destroyer. Later, he killed his own mother Queen Heggra, partly in revenge for the fact that she had killed the woman he’d loved, and assumed leadership of Apokolips.

Bent on universal domination and motivated by his quest for the Anti-Life Equation, a mathematical formula that proves life is hopeless and can rob any life form of their free will, Darkseid has made many enemies, including the heroes Lightray and Mr. Miracle and his own son Orion, the "dog of war." Darkseid’s attentions later turned towards the planet Earth when he became convinced that human beings held different parts of the Anti-Life Equation hidden in their minds. This brought him into conflict with many super-heroes as well.

Until recently in Final Crisis, he was never successful in conquering Earth, true. But that didn’t mean he never got the better of a hero ever before.

Here then are six moments where Darkseid got to laugh at the failure of his enemies and his own dark power.

 

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Happy Birthday: William Woolfolk

Happy Birthday: William Woolfolk

Born on Long Island, New York in 1917, William “Bill” Woolfolk once claimed that he didn’t create many comic book characters but he did coin many of their most famous lines.

He was responsible for Captain Marvel’s exclamation of “Holy Moley!”, among other well-known lines.

Woolfolk started writing comic books in the early 1940s after he graduated from New York University. His first jobs were with Will Eisner and Jerry Iger’s company but he also wrote for Police Comics, DC (Superman and Batman), Timely (Sub-Mariner and Captain America), and Fawcett (Captain Marvel, Captain Marvel Jr., and Bulletman).

When Eisner went off to fight in World War II in 1942, Woolfolk and Manley Wade Wellman took over writing The Spirit. Woolfolk also served as chief scriptwriter for the 1961-65 courtroom drama The Defenders and wrote more than a dozen novels, including the 1968 bestseller The Beautiful Couple.

Woolfolk won many awards over the years, including a Scribner for short-story writing in 1940, two Emmy nominations for The Defenders, and an Inkpot in 2002. He died in 2003.

 

Happy Birthday: Beautia Sivana

Happy Birthday: Beautia Sivana

Some people hope to take after their parents—others hope they don’t. For Beautia Sivana the latter seems more likely.

Her father, Thaddeus Bodog Sivana, is a crazed scientist bent on world conquest and the utter destruction of his nemesis, Captain Marvel. Beautia’s two younger siblings take after their father in their immorality but Beautia herself—who is as lovely as her name suggests—is more kind-hearted (and her favorite brother, Magnificus, is simply indifferent).

At times, she has even rebelled and aided Captain Marvel in escaping her father’s traps, though that may be as much motivated by personal admiration as by a desire to truly reform.

Happy Birthday: Freddy Freeman

Happy Birthday: Freddy Freeman

Frederic Christopher “Freddy” Freeman was born and raised in a small New England fishing village. His parents drowned in a storm, however, and Freddy was sent to live with his maternal grandfather Jacob in Fawcett City in the American Midwest. Freddy was smart, friendly and a natural athlete, and by high school he was not only a star student but also a top-notch athlete.

Then disaster struck. While fishing in Fawcett Bay, Freddy and his grandfather saw a man fall from the sky. They rescued the man, discovering too late that it was Captain Nazi, propelled into the water by one of Captain Marvel’s mighty blows. Coming to, the Nazi supervillain attacked his saviors. Captain Marvel intervened, drove Captain Nazi away, and rushed the two civilians to the hospital, but the damage was done—Jacob died and Freddy was in critical condition.

Desperate to make amends, Captain Marvel brought the injured Freddy to the wizard Shazam, who revealed that Captain Marvel could pass some of his own power along to the boy. Thus Freddy became Captain Marvel, Jr. and part of the Marvel Family.

In his mortal form, however, Freddy had a limp, a permanent reminder of what had happened to him.
More recently the wizard Shazam died and the laws of magic were rewritten. Billy Batson became Marvel, the new keeper of magic, and Freddy underwent a series of trials before becoming Shazam, the new champion of magic.

Happy Birthday: Uncle Marvel

Happy Birthday: Uncle Marvel

Sure, everyone knows that Billy Batson, Mary Batson, and Freddy Freeman could say their magic words and transform into Captain Marvel, Mary Marvel, and Captain Marvel, Jr., three of the World’s Mightiest Mortals, also known as the Shazam family.

Yet in their regular lives, they were mere children, and often needed a protector and mentor. They found him in the guise of their uncle Dudley, who was actually not related to any of them. Very little is known about Dudley before he joined the Shazam family. He may have been a failed stage magician and a confidence artist at some point, and he had been married but was since divorced.

Dudley discovered the Marvels’ secret by happening across Mary’s Good Deed Ledger and returned it to her, claiming to be her long lost uncle. He also claimed to have magic powers of his own and wore a Marvel costume he had made himself—when Mary transformed Dudley stripped off his regular clothes to reveal the costume and become Uncle Marvel. He established a business, Shazam Incorporated, to channel money from the Marvels’ deeds into charitable organizations, though he did pocket a little of the money for himself.

The Marvels quickly found out about his scheme, and that he was not related to them and didn’t actually have any powers. But they liked Dudley, who was otherwise a good person, and so they allowed him to maintain the charade. Dudley explained his lack of powers after that by saying he had lost them due to a bad case of “shazambago.”

Despite having no powers Dudley could often trick opponents into defeating themselves, and he did provide a caring paternal figure for the three young orphans.

ComicMix Six: The Worst Superhero Names in Comics

ComicMix Six: The Worst Superhero Names in Comics

You know you’ve talked about it with your friends. "Mr. Fantastic? He’s got, like, 17 doctorates… Shouldn’t he be ‘Doctor Fantastic’ by now?" And let’s not forget "Captain Marvel, Junior." Captain Marvel’s not his father. What gives? And what’s the deal with that Golden Age aquatic hero who called himself "The Fin?"

No matter how much we love comics, there are some superhero aliases we just can’t get behind. So we did our best to compile some of the worst superhero names in existence.

By the way, members of the Legion of Super-Heroes have been omitted from the list, because… well, it’s just too easy to pick on Matter-Eater Lad and Bouncing Boy.

 

6. KID MIRACLEMAN: In the U.K., he was originally called "Kid Marvelman." That doesn’t change the fact that it’s a lame name. Why?

KID MiracleMAN.

You can use the word "kid" in your name or you can use the word "man," but you can’t use both! With the power of contradiction comes great responsibility!

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