THE HISTORY OF CAPTAIN MARVEL (all of them) pre-history

CAPTAIN MARVEL CULTURE


by Zorikh Lequidre

CHAPTER 1: Pre-history - The Captain and the Major

The story of the original Captain Marvel can be seen as intersecting tangents of histories of two American military adventurers and entrepreneurs, Captain “Billy” Fawcett and Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson.

After the First World War, the survivors, military and civilian, found the world a very different place than it had been before the war. The soldiers in the trenches had lived through hell, and some countries had seen an entire generation of men die. Empires had tumbled, technology had advanced, and there was both hope for peace and democracy and the seeds sown for future conflict.

This post-war world was a new frontier for human civilization. In Europe, the “lost generation” that had lived through this hell sought distraction and adventure in manners chronicled by writers like Ernest Hemmingway. Back in the U.S., the Roaring Twenties kicked into gear. Although alcohol was illegal, leisure time was being taken very seriously. Organized crime and prohibition drove the headlines. The carefree “untamed youth” of college students, flappers, and playboys drove the entertainment industry, eating up the latest music, movies, cars, magazines, and entertainments.

Two veterans found themselves in the publishing industry of this era after leaving the military.

Enter the Captain

Captain Wilford H. “Billy” Fawcett was one of those exceptional men who led a life that stories were written about. He ran away from home and joined the army in time to serve in the Philippine Insurrection and First World War. Between these conflicts he began a career in journalism as a police reporter in Minneapolis, Minnesota. His first post-war endeavors were focused on military veterans, but prohibition killed the nightclub he opened to serve former soldiers and sailors and the roadhouse that followed.

He had made it a habit to memorize jokes and funny sayings, and so in 1919 he published a mimeographed pamphlet of racy humor and personal writings to distribute to wounded veterans in hospitals. “Captain Billy,” as he was known, made 5,000 copies of his first issue, reportedly for the volume discount. Historians differ on whether a wholesaler picked up the pamphlet, or if Captain Billy simply distributed his surplus copies himself, but in any event, the pamphlet wound up on newsstands and in drugstores throughout the Minneapolis area. The publication was an instant hit.

The title of the magazine was “Captain Billy’s Whiz-Bang,” after a well-known type of artillery shell. The magazine started with a military bent with articles of veteran’s interest and saluting America, poems on manly subjects like “Casey at the Bat,” jokes and cartoons. Soon, however, the subject matter became more risqué, with jokes about women, popular fashion and culture trends, and ethnic stereotypes. It soon became a favorite of the “untamed youth” of the Roaring Twenties. Much of the humor was groaningly bad even then, and today would either seem achingly out of date, or most certainly be called “politically incorrect.” But people of the time, hungry for the latest trends in entertainment, looking for a good time, enjoyed it. Circulation had mushroomed to over 500,000 by the mid 1920’s. Though all but forgotten today, it was notorious in its time and inspired a wave of magazines of literature, humor, and cartoons, such as Jim Jam Jems, Home Brew, Smokehouse Monthly, and Eye-Opener. Its title and reputation were immortalized in Meredith Willson's musical The Music Man, when professor Harold Hill asks with dread if the town’s youths are “memorizing jokes out of Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang?” (although the play was set before the magazine ever came out!).

Captain Billy, ever a hard worker with a plan, parlayed the success of this magazine into a whole line of diverse magazines, from True Confessions to Woman’s Day to Screen Play to Popular Mechanix, under the banner of the Fawcett Publishing Company. His brothers and son helped in the business, which opened offices first in Robbinsdale, Mn. (which now holds an annual nostalgia festival called “Whiz Bang Days”), then Minneapolis, then moved to Greenwich Conn. and New York City in 1935. Captain Billy became a friend of movie stars, celebrities, and royalty with whom he would tour the world, hunt, dine, and invite to his new luxury Breezy Point Resort This publishing empire long outlived its creator, finally being sold to CBS in 1977. Several of its titles are still published today.

Meanwhile, the Major…

Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson had been a cavalry officer, and claimed a career of wild, exotic, world-spanning military adventure, including service from France to the Philippines, fighting against bandits and Bolsheviks. Ultimately, disagreements with certain officers and the army and a letter to President Harding ended his military career in 1924. He then took to writing adventure stories for the pulp magazines of the time.

Pulp magazines were publications printed on cheap paper filled with stories, frequently targeting a “lowbrow” audience. They usually focused on one particular genre or another, some of the more popular being detective, science fiction, adventure, romance, and western. The “pulps” developed a reputation for spicy, sometimes lurid stories, for being a form of low-class literature looked down upon by serious writers. The public, though, read them voraciously. Popular charcters from other serial media (such as The Shadow, the Lone Ranger, and the Green Hornet, who in their day would appear in everything from radio shows to motion pictures) would also have adventures in the pulps. The writings of the major (by all accounts a colorful, stylish, and daring fellow) fit in very well and even earned him front cover billing.

In 1929 the depression hit. The ranks of the unemployed swelled to catastrophic levels. While companies and individuals went bankrupt and industries collapsed, popular entertainments, which had been an exciting part of the carefree decade of the Twenties, took on a new sense of purpose in the Thirties. Movies, music, and other entertainments re-focused their efforts to either escapism (serving as a refuge from cruel reality) or social relevance (highlighting the struggles and injustices of the age).

Newspaper comic strips had grown from the first regular features, the "Brownies" in 1883 and the "Yellow Kid" in 1895, into a full-blown industry by this time. Some of the most popular strips, including Mutt & Jeff, the Katzenjammer Kids, and Bringing Up Father, had already been reprinted in “comic books” earlier in the century. There had been at least one attempt to produce a regular publication of all-new comics before 1933, but it was not until that year that a regular comic publication appeared to stay.

The first modern “comic books” were conceived by Harry I. Wildenberg of Eastern Color Printing Company as a free bonus give-away by companies like Proctor and Gamble, Milk-o-Malt, Wheatina, etc. These were reprints of Sunday comic strips, printed on newsprint and folded into half the size of a tabloid newspaper. Max C. Gaines, who had marketed these books, put ten-cent stickers on a few dozen copies (this particular edition being titled Famous Funnies: A Carnival of Comics), dropped them off at a few newsstands, and before the weekend was out, every one had been sold! Though it took a few issues for a profit to be seen, the book proved a success. It continued to be published, with both reprint and original material, until 1955 for 218 issues.

Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson had been watching the success of Famous Funnies and embarked on a new adventure: publishing comic books. He rented an office and put out a call for artists and writers to produce all new material for his new publication. He used his connections in the pulp world to secure advertisers for his magazine. Historians disagree as to whether the major thought that all-new material would sell better than reprints or if he simply lacked the cash to license reprints of newspaper strips (perhaps both factors were true). In any event, New Fun Comics, published by the major’s new company National Allied Publications, was the beginning of the comic book industry as we know it today. It was the first of the modern era of comic books with all new material and advertisements.

Ironically, neither of these men were a part of their publishing adventures for their greatest successes in comic book heroes. Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson had been bought out of his comic book company in 1938, before the appearance of its most popular character, Superman. Captain “Billy” Fawcett died in 1940, just after the first appearance of the subject of this course, Captain Marvel.

Chapter 2: The Big Blue Guy

Go to the outline of Captain Marvel history
Chapter 1: The Captain and the Major
Chapter 2: The Big Blue Guy
Chapter 3: The Big Red Guy
Chapter 4: Early Captain Marvel
Chapter 5: Powers and Personality
Chapter 6: Going Hollywood
Chapter 7: Friends and foes: The Lietenant Marvels
Chapter 8: Friends and Foes: Captain Marvel Junior
Chapter 9: Friends and Foes: Mary Marvel
Chapter 10: Friends and Foes: Mr. Tawny
Chapter 11: Friends and Foes: Dr. Sivana
Chapter 12: Mr Mind
Chapter 13: Friends and Foes: Other Foes
Chapter 14: Enter the Binder
Chapter 15: Superman V. Captan Marvel
Chapter 16
Acknowledgements

Links

Go to the homepage of Captain Marvel Culture

Independent study:

Research popular humor of the 1920’s. What were some popular subjects for humor then? Would such humor be funny today? Why or why not?

What other famous writers were involved in the First World War? How did the experience affect their writing, if at all?

In what ways did popular entertainment change between the 1920's and the 1930's? What can account for these changes?

Bibliography

The Comic Book in America by Mike Benton

Comics, Comix & Graphic Novels: A History of Comic Art by Roger Sabin

DC Comcs: Sixty Years of the World’s Favorite Comic Book Heroes by Les Daniels

Fawcett Companion: The Best of FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America) Ed. By P. C. Hamerlinck

The Golden Age of Comic Books by Richard O’Brien

Over 50 Years of American Comic Books by Ron Goulart

The Shazam! Archives Vol. 1 Richard Lupoff, Rich Morrissey

The Shazam! Archives Vol. 2 R.C. Harvey, Richard Morrissey, Adam Philips

The Shazam! Archives Vol. 3 Michael Uslan

Websites

http://glasseyecomics.com/history/era/platinum.html

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/8580/Hist1.html

http://www.geocities.com/mbrown123/greatest_comics/detective1.html

http://www.411mania.com/comics/columns/article.php?columns_id=1503

http://www.comicbooklife.com/pag/benton/bentonCBA_1935.html (an on-line version of the book “The Comic Book in America” by Mike Benton)

http://www.jai2.com/HK2.htm

http://www.urth.net/urth/archives/v0302/2876.txt.shtml

http://www.urth.net/urth/archives/v0302/2877.txt.shtml

http://www.toonopedia.com/dc.htm

http://www.tcj.com/3_online/n_liebobit.html

http://www.terrortales.org/kane/kane17.htm

http://home.att.net/~dannysoar5/origin.html

http://shazam.imginc.com/fca/interviews/rfawcett.asp

http://www.compedit.com/whiz_bang.htm

http://www.doggedresearch.com/wilson/glossary.htm

Go to the outline of Captain Marvel history
Chapter 1: The Captain and the Major
Chapter 2: The Big Blue Guy
Chapter 3: The Big Red Guy
Chapter 4: Early Captain Marvel
Chapter 5: Powers and Personality
Chapter 6: Going Hollywood
Chapter 7: Friends and foes: The Lietenant Marvels
Chapter 8: Friends and Foes: Captain Marvel Junior
Chapter 9: Friends and Foes: Mary Marvel
Chapter 10: Friends and Foes: Other Friends
Chapter 11: Friends and Foes: Dr. Sivana
Chapter 12: Mr Mind
Chapter 13: Friends and Foes: Other Foes
Chapter 14: Enter the Binder
Chapter 15: Superman V. Captan Marvel
Chapter 16
Acknowledgements

Links

Go to the homepage of Captain Marvel Culture Go to Zorikh's Creating Comics tutorial
Go to a list of Comic Book movies
Watch This Space Enterprises home page
Zorikh Lequidre's home page

Go to the home page of Captain Marvel Culture
Go to Watch This Space Enterprises
Go to Zorikh's homepage

Content of this web page is copyright 2003 by Zorikh Lequidre
All characters named in are copyrighted by their respective copyrght holders.
This outline is not sponsored or endorsed by the holders of any of these copyrights or the creators of any of these characters.