Shazam!

I teach you the superman. Man is something to be surpassed.

~Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra

On my last trip to the National Library, I borrowed two hardcover books. The first was a re-work of the Shazam! origin by Jeff Smith (the genius behind Bone), playfully titled "The Monster Society of Evil". The second was a re-printing of the first issues of Shazam! (DC Archive Editions Shazam! Archives Volume 1).

Captain Marvel first appeared in Facwett's Whiz Comics, published in February 1940, two years after the alien named Clark Kent and one year after the insane earthman named Bruce Wayne made their respective debuts. Interestingly, on the cover of Captain Marvel's first appearance, Cap is drawn hurling a villan's car into a brick wall. On the cover of Action Comics #1, Superman is shown lifting a car (almost the same model as the Captain Marvel car), and ramming it's front into an earth mound.

Another observation - both titles start with letters at the opposite end of the alphabet.

I have nothing but praise for Jeff Smith's retelling. His characterizations and art are wonderful. Excellent pacing, little touches that feel right for a story about two young people facing a powerful menace from the other side of the Rock of Eternity. Smith is true to the mood and humour of the original. Sivana is still evil, but seems more like the Luthor from John Byrne's rework of Superman. A suit with a brilliant mind, in a respectable position in society but with a heart of blackness. No matter - it was the giant monsters that Mr Mind brought to Earth that were the grand pleasure. They stood still most of the time, making them look all the more menacing, and perhaps something like out of Paul Chadwick's Concrete.

Captain Marvel and the Marvel Family were the backdrop from which Alan Moore created MarvelMan, which began life in serialized form in the British Warrior comic. I first came across this comic at the small shop at the MacRitchie bus-stop in the early 1980s, while on my way home from the Nanyang Campus. At that time, V for Vandetta was being serialised and I remember being haunted by David Lloyd's art on the series.

Alan Moore took the corny innocence of the British Marvel Family (led by Marvelman who was a shameless copy of America's Captain Marvel) and turned it into something dark, sinister and absolutely brilliant. Doctor Gargunza looked very much like Doctor Sivana, and the earlier childish Marvel Family stories were explained as dreams plucked from comic books that Gargunza fed into the minds of his test subjects to keep them in a controlled state while their bodies, fashioned from Alien Technology were being probed and manipulated.

The series ended prematurely when Warrior folded. Eclipse Comics reprinted the old stories, and published the new stories in the US, and I lapped up each issue as it appeared. To keep Marvel's lawyers at bay, Marvelman was renamed Miracleman - a perfectly acceptable change if it meant we continued to get more of this fantastic series.

Alan Moore ended his run with the defeat of the grown Kid Miracleman, Johnny Bates in what must have been one of the most violent and gory mainstream comics ever. After "saving" the world, Miracleman sets himself up as leader of a world governed as a Dictatorship, by a Dictator benign, but who had lost all traces of his humanity. Neil Gaiman took over, and did what he did best on his Sandman run - writing short, seemingly unconnected stories that help build up a mythology, that strengthen an overall storyline racing to some tragic conclusion.

We never get to see that conclusion. Eclipse Comics unfortunately went bust, and thanks to a whole lot of competing legal claims to the rights to use the characters, we probably never will get to see the ending Gaiman intended.

Contrast the world of superheroes in the late 1930s when they first emerged, with the world that emerges post Johnny Bates in Miracleman. The 1930s comics were stories of hope and heroism, bright colored costumes and clear distinctions between good and evil, at a time when the world was sinking into darkness, when evil was penetrating the hearts of Europe and Asia. In the world of Miracleman, the superhuman class rule over mankind in a world of technological sophistication and granduer, where there is order and no wars exist, but where all seems dark and controlled and lacking in heart and spirit. Man is indeed surpassed by the superman, but it is not good.