DC Comics’ iconic superhero Captain Marvel will now be known as Shazam, the name of the wizard he summons his mystical powers from.
“We’re going to call him Shazam,” DC Comics Chief Creative Officer Geoff Johns told Newsarama about renaming the character also known as “The World’s Mightiest Mortal.”
Most loyal comic book fans know that young Billy Batson becomes Captain Marvel by summoning a magical lightning bolt when he calls out the name Shazam! But to passing fans, he is often know, or mistakenly referred to, as Shazam. The change will come in March starting with a new ten page series, Curse of Shazam!
“Well, there are a lot of reasons for the change,” Johns explained.
“One is that everybody thinks he’s called Shazam already, outside of comics. It’s also, for all sorts of reasons, calling him Shazam just made sense for us. And, you know, every comic book he’s in right now has Shazam on the cover. So I think just by embracing that and calling him Shazam.”
DC started from scratch last August with their entire universe by revamping all their popular characters histories including Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and Green Lantern in The New 52 re-branding. So the time is right time to make this change for Captain Marvel, who first appeared in 1940’s Whiz Comics #2.
There are also legal issues involved. Marvel Comics actually owns the name Captain Marvel for an unrelated character of their own. DC has never been able to use the name as a title of a series or movie, and had to make Shazam synonymous with their version.
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| The Marvel Family |
Freddie Freeman and Mary Batson also joined Billy over the years as Captain Marvel Jr, and Mary Marvel to battle evil together as the Marvel Family. Johns confirms that many familiar faces are all part of the plan.
“Billy, Mary, Freddie, Sivana, the Wizard, Black Adam. You’ll see some other familiar faces. You’ll see a lot of new faces too — new concepts, new characters,” he said. How these characters get revamped is yet to be seen.
Johns also confirmed that the Shazam movie is still in the works, despite many delays in the script process. “There’s always talk about Shazam. And I can’t get into the specifics on that, but yeah, there’s hope for Shazam,” he revealed.
Dwayne Johnson has been rumored and expressed enthusiastic interest in playing the big screen version of Black Adam, a villain with the equivalent mystical super powers as Shazam. “I haven’t let it go,” Johnson told MTV last March.
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| Shazam versus Black Adam |
“I’ve always loved the idea of playing Black Adam. A lot of the time in Hollywood when something is in development it takes a lot of time. So who knows what’s going to happen with that. Maybe maybe not, but I’m always here,” he said.
Curse of Shazam!, written by Geoff Johns with art by Gary Frank, will debut as an ongoing monthly supplement series in Justice League, beginning with issue #7. The issue hits comic book shops and digital platforms in March.
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