Shazam! #9
Vootie!
Creative Team: 1st story-Denny O'Neil-writer, CC Beck-artist, Julie Schwarz-editor; 2nd story-Elliot S! Maggin-writer, Dave Cockrum-art; 3rd story-elliot S! Maggin-writer, CC Beck-art,
First off, I have to comment on the inside cover...
Responsibility in an ad? Holey Moley! Usually it's "Buy this product and be the envy of friends, have women fall at your feet (or men lust after you), become akin to a god...etc, etc" Nope, just "This is not a toy, you have to work for it, you have to be responsible..." That generation of advertisers and manufacturers is gone (parents too, sadly, in many cases). Of course, they are marketing this weapon (not a toy) in a publication aimed at kids, and young ones, at that. Gotta have some hypocrisy or Madison Avenue sulks.
Synopsis: "Worms of the World, Unite." You have nothing to lose but fishhooks!
Billy Batson checks out the wanted posters at the post office, both as a news reporter and alter ego of a World's Mightiest Mortal. He notes that criminals are still the same, 20 years later. he leaves but fails to notice a little caterpillar, with glasses and a radio hanging around his neck. It's Mr Mind, looking for recruits for his new Monster Society of Evil (Local 602). He goes to visit one, a mad scientist (lot of angry scientists out there. Go figure...), who has developed a hate projector, suitable for use with gorillas....
...or megalomaniacal caterpillars. Before he can test it, captain Marvel bursts through the wall and nabs him. mr Mind ducks inside the projector and gnashes his.....um....I guess they have teeth, of a sort...and his hatred of captain Marvel radiates out and the mad scientist collapses, to CM's surprise. Mr Mind also notices, though he also notes Captain Marvel wasn't affected. he theorizes a way that could affect him....
"I wish I had hands, so I could stroke my chin thoughtfully...if I had a chin.." That's funny!
So, Mr Mind wonders if he can gather an army of worms, could they project enough hate to affect Captain Marvel? Well, let's find out. Billy Batson receives a news bulletin that thousands of worms are on the march...er, crawl and heads off to meet them. He finds thousands of them all heading towards a hill, where Mr Mind sits, inside the hate projector. He delivers a whammy to The Big Red Cheese. It knocks him down and Mr Mind cackles and Captain Marvel recognizes the amplified tittering. he tries again and gets knocked down again.
Cue Chumbawumba.....
He gets an idea and flies to a bait shop and purchases dry ice and flies up into the clouds to seed them, causing it to rain (Science!). The rain drives the worms to the surface, reducing the strength of the Hate Projector until Captain Marvel captures Mr Mind and dumps him into a tin can...
Actually, the detached body segment explanation for surviving the electric chair is pretty good. Guess the Wisdom of Solomon was replaced by the Smugness of a Sports Reporter.
Charles Atlas ad follows...
Mac should just try saying Shazam! and letting Captain Marvel beat the snot out of the bully. Of course, he would have been better served to forget the "dynamic tension" and take boxing lessons, since the bully doesn't seem to have much defense and a glass jaw. A bantamweight or flyweight could have knocked that shmoe out, no problem.
"The Mystery of the Missing Newsstand."-News vender Freddy Freeman receives the day's paper shipment and helps his first customer, who pays him 5 bucks for, at most a 50 cent newspaper and tells him to keep the change. Yo, dude, send some fins my way! This is a daily ritual, until one morning, Freddy turns up to find his corner newsstand gone and Good-Natured Joe nowhere to be seen...
Freddy notices the headline about elevators being stolen out of buildings and witnesses an airship doing just that. He calls out for Captain Marvel and...whoo-ha...Captain Marvel Jr appears. Thank you very much! He attacks the airship and gets driven off by ray beams. he watches as it moves on to the next building. He follows them to a smelting plant, where international metal ore smugglers are melting them down to sell sell the rare metals to a foreign power, to build weapons!
Wait.........WHAT?!?
What the hell kind of cockamamie scheme is that? These are elevators, not catalytic converters....they are pretty much your run of the mill steel aluminum and similar metals.
Metal ore smugglers?
What the heck is Elliot smoking?
Put this on Facebook and see if the wingnuts latch onto that conspiracy!
Junior turns up, and like a hunka-hunka burning love, tears through the crooks! He frees Good-Natured Joe from the elevator he was trapped in, and he runs off...
...to surprise Freddy with a new plastic pre-fab newsstand, with signage to match!
"The Day Captain Marvel Went Ape!"-Sterling Morris taps Billy to replace the wizard, on the Mr Bonzo show. They rehearse, but Billy isn't giving it enough oomph and Mr Morris demonstrates, scaring the J Jred Muggs out of Mr Bonzo, the chimp. Mr Bonzo takes off and Billy says the magic word to change, except he doesn't! Instead, Mr Bonzo is transformed into the World's Mightiest Monkey (er...chimp, monkeys have tails).
He tries again and transforms his boss into Captain Morris! He gives it a third go and Trixie is turned into the World's Most Curly-Haired Mortal, With a Stripper Name!
Bonzo swipes Billy's turban (there must have been some magic in that old towel hat they found...) and flies off, crashing through the wall (bricklayers and plasterers must make a fortune in this city!) and Captain Morris and Trixie Marvel chase after....
Unfortunately, Captain Morris is afraid of heights and feints and must be rescued by Trixie Marvel. Billy has seen enough, tries again and the REAL Captain Marvel (not that red and blue phony) appears and goes after Mr Bonzo. However, the Wisdom of Solomon is on break and Captain Marvel thinks out loud and says "Shazam!" and Billy tumbles out of the sky. he says it again and Captain marvel rights himself and continues on and the wizard, sitting at the Rock of Eternity, slaps his forehead. CM chases after Captain Bonzo and tries some acrobatics to wear him out, but the chimp is better at it than the Cheese. Captain Marvel then borrows a hat from a mule (matching intelligence) and then takes captain Bonzo to a restaurant, to eat and they check their hats.
Captain Marvel grabs the turban and says "Shazam!" Captain Bonzo returns to being plain Bonzo, then CM takes him back to the station and does the same for Captain Morris and Trixie Marvel. Sterling Morris ends up playing the wizard in the show, to great effect.
The letters page asks about what city the Marvels live in and are told that Fawcett never named it, though it was accepted by most to be New York. Well, from here on, we shall accept Jerry Ordway's conceit and refer to it as Fawcett City. We are also told that the series is now monthly; so, sales must have been decent enough to warrant that.
Back cover advertises Aurora's Ready Ranger Backpack!
I think a friend had one of these ($12.95 was a little expensive for my Christmas wish list). The 70s had way cooler toys than today!
Nerf Guns you say? Bah; we had BB guns and disc shooters. It's not fun unless it stings like hell!
Thoughts: Fun issue! The opening story, with Mr Mind, is a riot and Mr Mind is always fun. love the robot monster helmet design and Mr Mind is still my favorite Captain Marvel foe (Aunt Minerva is a close second, as next issue will demonstrate). It's fairly basic, but the premise works and it actually succeeds as humor. It was even sort of adapted for the Filmation cartoon...
And who was the writer of that episode? Paul Dini!
The Captain Marvel Jr story is the first new one for the character (apart from issue #1's main story) and Maggin and Cockrum are trying to match the style of the classic Fawcett stories; but don't quite succeed. Metal ore smugglers? It's an oddball one, mostly saved by Cockrum's art, as he tries to emulate the look of Mac Raboy's design. As with the original, its more illustrative style stands in contrast to CC Beck's cartoonier Captain Marvel stories.
The last story is a hoot, as should be expected whenever you introduce a chimp into a story. The whole thing is pretty much an homage to J Fred Muggs (with a little of Bedtime for Bonzo thrown in), the chimpanzee who co-starred with Dave Garroway, on the Today Show, in the 50s. Well, really, it's an homage to Mad Magazine's parody of J Fred and Dave....
Vootie!
Mad parodied the Today Show in 1955, in issue #26, as Harvey Kurtzman savages Garroway (or Garrowunway) and J Fred (J Floyd Gluggs), as the chimp undercuts Garroway, until he replaces the boob and takes over, uttering the immortal word, "Vootie." Mad and Kurtzman's influence on readers and Baby Boomer comic writers and artists cannot be understated, as just about every Underground creator cites both the magazine and the editor as an influence. Vootie became a common joke word/sound effect in undergrounds and was also the name of an APA for lovers of funny animal comics and cartoons. Mike Baron and Steve Rude would continue to give it life in the pages of Nexus, as it became a favorite expression of characters, particularly Mezz.
CC finally gets to play up some antics and he goes to town with it and Maggin concocts a pretty good plot to drive things. The transference of Captain Marvel's power was a not-uncommon plot device, such as with the 3 Lieutenant Marvels, or in the debut of Junior and Mary. This conceit will turn up again in a future story, in this series.
Trixie is an actress for the Bonzo Show and was not a pre-existing character.
I don't know if it was intentional; but the image of Captain Marvel in the mule's hat, with Bonzo next to him, puts me in mind of Curious George. I suspect it is me, since the hat is brown and not yellow, as with The Man in the Yellow Hat. Still, Curious George makes me happy!
You know, I would have bought a comic of Captain Bonzo's adventures!
DC seems to be finally getting the hang of things, though CC beck had had enough and next issue is his last. We'll get to that next time, which is tied into something that appeared in the letters page, this issue, but which DC was still reluctant to try, at this stage. More on that enigma, next time. For now.......
Vootie!
. The scene reminded me of the first time Superman had to fight with other Kryptonians (so physically equal to him).
) and then they just say he says the name of his idol. They don't elaborate because then they would have to bring up Captain Nazi and they weren't about to do that. They also didn't use Ibac, because of his evil patrons and selling his soul, nor Sabac, for the same reasons, or Nippo, for obvious reasons or Mr Banjo, because he was stupid, even in the 40s! Could have used King Kull, though that would have probably led to issues with the REH estate.