Number 2333: Marvelous Marvelman

When Fawcett pulled the plug on their comic book line in 1953, it was because they came to an agreement with DC after years of legal wrangling over whether Captain Marvel infringed on Superman’s copyright. At the time the two companies were tussling, they were each licensing their products in other countries. (I recently showed a Batman story reprinted in Australia.) The UK was a good market for the Marvel Family, since the British publisher, L. Miller and Son, had three titles at the same time, Captain Marvel, Captain Marvel Jr, and Marvel Family. When Fawcett cut off their supply of Marvels, they invented their own “Captain Marvel” with some variations in his origin, and marketed him under the name Marvelman. They published up until 1960, then Marvelman was revived in the '80s. After a warning from Marvel Comics, the name was changed to Miracleman.

The story of Captain Marvel and the Captain Marvels that followed, and what happened to make Captain Marvel into Shazam is more than I want to get into at this time. But I am showing a 1955 comic book story of Marvelman, taken over by Mick Anglo and other artists to be the continuation of Captain Marvel. I believe it has historical interest in the complex Captain Marvel saga.This is from Marvelman #96. It looks like more than one artist worked on it, which isn’t surprising since they had a lot of product to put out in their weekly issues.

Number 2302: Captain Marvel and the space dragon

I have always assumed that Captain Marvel stories were done for youngsters, probably ages eight to twelve years. The drawings are usually fairly innocuous for comic books,* and Otto Binder, who wrote most of them, had a sense of humor so they can’t be taken seriously. This is also a story where someone says they can defeat a space dragon by gathering up “atomic rockets” and Captain Marvel does just that. He collects 1,093 atomic rockets, which if aimed at Earth might end all life on the planet. It never ceases to amaze me when I read in comic books — I have shown the phenomenon before — where the hero is handed nuclear weapons to use at his own discretion to end a threat.

The dragon is discovered by prison inmate Bozo Smith. I like that Captain Marvel works toward Bozo’s rehabilitation, even though his capture by Captain Marvel sent him to prison.

The story originally appeared in Captain Marvel Adventures #104 (1950). I scanned it from a 1953 Captain Marvel Annual from the UK. The whole annual (all 32 pages) is in color, which is unusual for reprints from the UK.

Grand Comics Database does not guess the writer and artist, so I’ll take a (hopefully educated) guess that it was written by Otto Binder, and drawn by the C.C. Beck studio.

*About 1953 Captain Marvel turned to horror for some of the stories, when horror comics became the vogue. Here is a link; just click on the thumbnail.

Number 1289: The Man from Planet X

Fawcett Publications had a couple of short-lived lines of movie adaptations, including Fawcett Movie Comic. The issues were mostly comic book versions of Western movies, but #15 in 1952 was science fiction, “The Man from Planet X.” I remember the movie, but I saw it a long time ago. Based on memory, this adaptation seems fairly faithful.

Overstreet lists the original U.S. printing as “scarce.” What I'm showing today is a European reprint, according to the indicia a French and English co-production. It was printed in black line in France. Uneven ink distribution makes it look fast-and-dirty, and I did my best to clean up the scans. I'd like to thank scanner Jimpy for providing the originals which I used as the basis for this presentation.

The Grand Comics Database provides information on writers and artists based on an American reprint from 1987, and who am I to disagree? They have a bunch of question marks, giving their ? credit to several artists including George Evans, Kurt Schaffenberger and Peter Costanza, and a ? inking credit to Jack Kamen. The artist I mainly see is Schaffenberger, but I'm not discounting their guesses. I've learned in my time doing this blog that with comic books and their production sometimes several hands went into getting a job done. While identifiable styles may peep out here and there, often the real credits can only be guessed at.

I stopped counting (after a dozen or so) how many times in the story the extraterrestrial is called the man from Planet X. Not “the alien” or “the spaceman,” which would be less cumbersome. In my case, after seeing the movie all those years ago I called him the man with the papier-mâché head.