Now I know for some of you, Captain Marvel is gonna be kind of a "whozzat?" hero. Others may remember him from the 1970's Saturday morning TV show "Shazam!". Still others may know him from his current comics incarnation and wonder why I called him a "Fawcett Comics hero" instead of a DC comics hero, since that's who publishes his adventures today. The truth, however, is that the history of this hero, originally created as a rival to Superman, is rather convoluted. Fortunately, it's also not all that relevant to the subject of today's essay, the 1941 Republic serial version of the character, except perhaps as an amusing sidebar in that as William Witney, notes in his book In a Door, Into a Fight, Out a Door, Into a Chase: Moviemaking Remembered by the Guy at the Door, the previous Republic serial, The Mysterious Dr Satan was originally intended to be a vehicle for Superman, in which case he would have beaten his rival to the screen. As it turned out, however, National Comics (as DC was known at the time) pulled out of negotiations, the hero for Dr. Satan was changed to the Copperhead (a non-powered masked man) and the Captain Marvel follow-up became the first official comics-to-film adaptation.
