Both scenes are long, given a gravitas, and dispense with lightheartedness that characterised Captain Marvel. After that he moves to the known origin of newspaper boy Billy being led to an odd subway station where he’s gifted the powers of Shazam, and able to transform into the world’s mightiest mortal just by saying that name. Ordway opens by revealing for the first time why Billy Batson is orphaned during a long scene in which his archaeologist parents are murdered. The Power of Shazam launched Ordway’s four year run, the most successful iteration since the 1940s, and a longevity not bettered since. Roy Thomas considers why his 1980s version never took off in the introduction to Shazam!: The New Beginning, and Jerry Ordway applied the same approach of stepping away from traditional approach and presenting Captain Marvel and his world more realistically. It left a character who’d once outsold Superman relegated to occasional guest star appearances, with no-one entirely sure what to do with him. A 1970s revival for Captain Marvel had been launched with considerable fanfare, but never really caught on beyond an initial rush, the cartooning out of touch in the 1970s.
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