Four weeks after the release of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Captain Marvel, the DC Cinematic Universe opened Shazam!, a film that by most rights deserves the title more, but not by copyright. The fault lies with DC as much as anyone. You could also say it serves them right.

Zachary Levi in Shazam! (2019)

That’s because the first superhero named Captain Marvel – the same character that stars in the film Shazam! – was litigated out of print by DC, who then, decades later, had the chutzpah to buy the rights to the character and publish new and reprint adventures of the hero and related characters (Captain Marvel Jr., Mary Marvel). They even hired one of the original artists to draw them!

So why can’t DC use the title Captain Marvel? Because in the years between, a rival comic book publisher had changed its name to Marvel and the owners decided that, to protect its brand, if anyone should have a hero with Marvel in its name it should be them. So they created one, published it and copyrighted it.

For some reason, DC was still allowed to call the character Captain Marvel, but the title of the comic was named Shazam! A TV series and now a movie have similarly been so titled.

The legal brouhaha involved DC’s copyright of the first superhero, Superman, who debuted in DC’s Action Comics in 1938. Its success led to many other similarly costumed crime fighters, most forgettable and none selling as well as Superman.

Then, in 1940, upstart Fawcett Comics introduced Captain Marvel, who had many of the same powers as Superman, although he derived these powers not from being an alien but as gifts from the gods (although some were actually exceptional mortals), specifically:

• Solomon’s wisdom
• Hercules’ strength
• Atlas’ stamina
• Zeus’s power
• Achilles’ courage (and, presumably, invulnerability)
• Mercury’s speed

Brie Larson in Captain Marvel (2019)

Put them, all together and you get the acronym SHAZAM, which is both the name of the wizard who bestows these powers on 12-year-old orphan Billy Batson and the magic word he must say to manifest these powers.

Along with these abilities, Billy also gets a full-grown body (his face was said to be based on actor Fred MacMurray) and mind. Solomon’s wisdom made Captain Marvel smart, far smarter than an under-educated 12-year-old could hope to be. Superman didn’t gain super-intelligence until years later.

There were some other differences. From the beginning, Captain Marvel actually flew, while in the comics Superman leaped like a grasshopper until 1943– although he started flying earlier in the animated cartoons and on the radio.

Aside from being really strong and really fast, there wasn’t really a lot of similarity between the characters. Their costumes were different, too:

• Superman wore blue with red accents, Captain Marvel wore red with yellow accents.
• Superman had a red collarless cape down his back; Captain Marvel had a mostly white cape with a collar that he wore over one shoulder.
• Superman wore briefs over a unitard; Captain Marvel wore a tunic that buttoned up the side, no briefs.

Both heroes faced bald evil geniuses, but arguably Captain Marvel came first. From the beginning, Captain Marvel mostly matched wits with Dr. Sivana, a completely bald and bespectacled evil genius. Superman’s nemesis Lex Luthor premiered about the same time, but he had a full head of hair then. The usually bald Ultra-Humanite predates Sivana, but he was in a wheelchair and sometimes had a fringe of hair.

In addition, Captain Marvel had better art, better scripts (some by early science fiction magazine great Otto Binder) and a better sense of humor. Soon Captain Marvel comics outsold Superman’s. He was even the first superhero to appear in a film, the serial The Adventures of Captain Marvel (1941).

Since Superman couldn’t beat Captain Marvel at the newsstand, DC tried to beat him in the courts. They sued for copyright infringement, which dragged on for years until the post-WWII comics slump. Most of the superhero comics were already cancelled, and Fawcett didn’t feel like fighting. They settled and Captain Marvel went out of print.

There have been so many different Captain Marvels since then (at least a half-dozen published by Marvel Comics alone) and reinventions of the classic character (as DC tried to integrate him with their overall comics universe) that you could be forgiven for thinking the character has multiple personality disorder (also known as dissociative identity disorder), an identity crisis, or some other form of mental illness. Eventually, DC even renamed him Shazam.

To complicate matters further, following the cancellation of the original Captain Marvel comics, there was a British rip-off (with a more science fictional sheen) called Marvelman. Following a 1982 revival/reboot (with dark, psycho-social situations), Marvel Comics sued and the name was changed to Miracleman. (Now Marvel owns the rights to him. More chutzpah!)

True, Billy Batson and Captain Marvel have somewhat different personalities (Billy even refers to himself and the Captain as “we”), but the original comics were fun, not dark. Billy had a 12-year-old’s perspective while Captain Marvel was an adult. (On one memorable occasion, a witch tries to seduce the Captain, who is flustered and turns back into Billy, who is still immune to feminine charms.) They shared memories but were different people.

DC has rebooted Shazam! several times. They have used him as a comic foil. They have portrayed him as naive. They have tried to make him darker (in the limited series Kingdom Come, he sacrifices himself to save Superman and other “metahumans”) or the incorruptible innocent (in Underworld Unleashed, the demon Neron is defeated when he can’t touch Captain Marvel’s soul because of its purity).

Now, in Shazam! “The Motion Picture”, the filmmakers seem to have taken a cue from the film Big and given the full-grown superhero the mind, impulse control, and sense of responsibility of a teen: buying beer, performing stunts for money, etc. (though over the course of the film, Billy grows into his power and becomes more responsible). Are they sure the wizard gave him Solomon’s wisdom?