LogFAQs > #926938105

Zeus posted...

Shazam/Captain Marvel used to be an A-list DC superhero, up until Marvel kept fucking with the trademarks around the name Captain Marvel.

Not really.

Captain Marvel/Shazam was significant early on (when he was literally just Superman with the serial numbers filed off), but it was already starting to suffer from the downturn in superhero comic popularity post-WWII before DC sued Fawcett out of business. The character was pretty much in limbo for 20 years because no one gave a shit.

Marvel really only called dibs on the Captain Marvel name because no one else was using it, and because they didn't want someone else to eventually revive it and cause confusion with their brand.

DC didn't even bother to start publishing new stories about the character until five years after Marvel had locked down the trademark, and didn't bother buying the right to the character outright for another 20 years or so after that. It was never a huge priority for them, and not really all that major a character in the eyes of the fandom.

Early on he was mostly treated as a bit of a throwaway character (much like the Charleton comic characters were when DC later acquired them as well, which was part of the impetus behind Watchmen), and it wasn't until the success of the TV show in the 70s that he wound up getting a significant boost (like the Hulk and Wonder Woman shows boosted the awareness of those characters, and the Isis TV show later led to her becoming a character tied to the Shazam universe). But even then, he spent most of the 80s and 90s as a fairly tertiary character at best.

Nostalgia-fueled nods from Waid/Ross in Kingdom Come and the DCAU animated team putting him in Justice League helped reintroduce him to a larger, younger audience, and that more than anything is probably what helped spur a greater prominence for the character, resulting in Mary Marvel being a major character during the 52/Countdown era, and Shazam literally getting rebooted as a major title by Geoff "I can revive anything" Johns in the New 52 era, but to the general public at large, he IS still sort of a C-list hero. Easily on par with Iron Man prior to the success of his movie.

If you asked most non-comic fans to start naming DC comic characters, Captain Marvel/Shazam probably wouldn't show up anywhere in their top 10, maybe not even their top 20 (if they could even name that many). The (relative) success of the recent film definitely helped elevate the character in the mainstream.
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