Number 1571: Captain Marvel goes Mad...then Nuts

A couple of things caught my eye when I read this Captain Marvel-King Kull tale in Captain Marvel Adventures #141 (1953). First, it has walking dead. That’s good. Second, it is told in the second person, which isn’t good or bad, just different than the usual third person that Captain Marvel stories were written in by chief scripter Otto Binder.

Then there is the so-so, which is a satire on Captain Marvel, “Captain Marble Flies Again,” done for Premier’s Nuts!#5 (1954), after Captain Marvel was cancelled. The story has its moments, but it depends on your tolerance for this type of satirical treatment. (It has a hooker under a street light putting the moves on Captain Marble; that’s interesting and solidly pre-Comics Code).

You remember another story done for Mad #4, “Superduperman” (below) featuring Captain Marbles and Superduperman in battle. It was a reference to the lawsuit against Fawcett by DC for copyright infringement, which which was ultimately decided in favor of DC. Go to Apocolyte’s World of Comics for the Mad story and some bonuses.

Ross Andru drew “Captain Marble Flies Again.” He and partner Mike Esposito published their own short-lived satire comic, Get Lost!. I wonder if this story was originally something they had prepared for that book.

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Number 1502: “So Captain Marvel zapped him right between the eyes...” — John Lennon

In reading and cleaning up the scans of this UK version of Captain Marvel Adventures #69 (US issue #124), John Lennon crossed my mind. In “The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill”* on the 1968 album, The Beatles, there is this lyric:

“Deep in the jungle where the mighty tiger lies
Bill and his elephants were taken by surprise
So Captain Marvel zapped him right between the eyes...”

One Beatles' song website believes the reference to Captain Marvel means John Lennon was spoofing Americans on superheroes. I think it is more likely that because Lennon was a kid when the British Captain Marvel comics were published (he was 11-years-old when this comic was published in 1951, for instance), he may well have seen or read comics featuring Captain Marvel. Captain Marvel was popular enough that in 1953 when his American adventures ended the British publisher, L. Miller, had Mick Anglo do a close version called Marvelman. Captain Marvel was known in England, so John Lennon using the name wouldn’t seem surprising.

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*You can read the story of the song’s origin in this Wikipedia page on “The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill”.

At the end of 2012 I scanned and posted the UK version of Fawcett's adaptation of the science fiction movie, The Man From Planet X, and last July I posted a UK edition of The Marvel Family Go to them by clicking on the thumbnails:

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Number 1419: Captain Marvel “moons” the earth!

Putting the moon back together after it has split in half is no problem for Captain Marvel. “Menace of the Moon” is a fairly typical tale of the Big Red Cheese, drawn by C. C. Beck and written by Otto Binder for Captain Marvel Adventures #106 (1950). Binder had a light touch, even with such a story, which seems like it needs more of a treatment considering such epic subject matter as the destruction of the moon.

Despite the light touch, Binder, whom I met in 1970 at his home in Chestertown, NY after his comic book career had ended, impressed me as a man who took all writing assignments seriously. He was writing freelance at the time, turning out science fiction novels on a regular basis. I admired his work ethic. He told me he got up in he morning, five days a week, and wrote until he had 2,000 “usable words” — about 10 pages of typescript. I did the calculations in my head (“Ten pages, novel 160 pages long, sixteen working days to write.” Wow, although I’m sure there were days he wrote less or more, depending on circumstances.) As an article from the Roy Thomas-edited fanzine, Alter Ego #9 (1965) explains, during the golden age of comics Otto was a busy man writing comic book scripts. So busy he didn’t have time to dress; he wrote in his pajamas and robe. I’ve included that article in this post. It has some snapshots supplied by Otto, which show some of his friends. The snapshots aren’t great quality, but we get a tantalizing glimpse of people Otto worked with at Fawcett.

Binder and Beck retained copyrights to the Captain Marvel character, Mr. Tawny, the Talking Tiger. Along with the article there were two pages of samples (a week’s continuity) of a proposed Mr. Tawny newspaper comic strip. It has the same lightness of touch that Otto used so effectively with Captain Marvel.

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