Number 2362: The Shazambot

This story seems prescient. A robot (invented by the Marvels, along with the faker, Uncle Marvel, as “Shazam Inc”) drives a truck. Recently I have seen more than one news report of driverless trucks being tested on the roads, piloted by artificial intelligence. What was once science fiction, even as whimsical as “The Marvel Family and the Shazam Robot,” is coming true. I don’t know yet how I feel about a robot driving a giant rig behind me on the freeway. I’ll have to wait until it happens for real, and not just in the pages of an old comic book.

Written by Otto Binder (creator of the popular Adam Link robot stories), but with no credits for the artwork. Published in The Marvel Family #5 (1946).

Number 2253: The Marvel Family and the School for Witches

Halloween today. Time for me to sneak up behind kids and steal their Halloween candy.* Or maybe not. I am too slow moving, and they can see me coming.

If I only had a magic spell to make myself invisible. I could learn it from the School for Witches, but the witch is Ichabod Vort, who comes from a long line of witches, yet is unsuccessful with spells from his book of black magic. They just don’t work for him. Ichabod has a school to train witches, and could be an example of the old adage, “those who can, do; those who can't, teach.” However, I don’t believe that adage. I think Ichabod is just a crappy witch. Maybe he needs a teacher because he can’t read very well.

The story is written by William Woolfolk and drawn by Pete Costanza, according to the Grand Comics Database. It comes from The Marvel Family #52 (1950).

*This is a joke, sensitive ones.

Number 2200: Golden Age Black Adam, one and done

Old Shazam blew it when he gave powers to Black Adam (Shazam called him Mighty Adam originally), who was created as an evil version of Captain Marvel. In looking at the Grand Comics Database for the issue this story appeared in, Marvel Family #1 (1945), I see this origin story has been reprinted several times since DC Comics acquired the rights to Captain Marvel in 1973. The character is an interesting bad guy, but it appears no one at Fawcett had any plans to keep him on as a resident menace.

A Wikipedia page gives information about Black Adam’s appearances after the character was revived, but I keep it simple here at Pappy’s. In keeping with my simple mind, I stick with the Golden Age versions only.

Otto Binder wrote it, and C.C. Beck and Pete Costanza are given credit for the artwork.

Number 1951: Captain Marvel Jr and the Poore man’s radioactive attack!

I didn’t misspell “poor” in the header above. Spencer Poore is a businessman in “Captain Marvel Jr and the Radioactive Air!” from Marvel Family #54 (1951). What we comic book readers learned early on — and this is a spoiler if you haven’t learned it yet — is any new character introduced into a story will likely be the bad guy at the end.

This entertaining bit of hokum involves a real-life threat of the time, radioactivity. The Atomic Age was upon us!

I have thought about what friend and frequent commenter Daniel said about the Marvels...they should just stay in their superhero personas. I can see why Billy and Mary Batson go back to their civilian identities (in Billy’s case, he has a job at station WHIZ), but poor Freddy Freeman is left to peddle his papers while supported by a crutch. I know this is a comic book and uses comic book logic, but of the three Marvel Family characters, Freddy is the one who could bypass his handicap by staying a superhero.

Grand Comics Database doesn’t name a scripter, but guesses Kurt Schaffenberger was the artist. Just go back a couple of weeks to Pappy’s #1943, and see the lead story from that issue, which was drawn by Schaffenberger, then compare. I am not sure who drew this Captain Marvel Jr story, but it wasn’t Schaffenberger.