Shazam was originally conceived as “Captain Marvel,” and during the 1940s, was an incredibly popular comic book character - even more popular than Superman. Two decades later, DC cheekily purchased the rights to the character and integrated him into the DC universe, where he was referred to within the pages of his comics as “Captain Marvel” but marketed as “Shazam,” due to an ongoing trademark conflict with Marvel Comics, which had since created a separate character sharing the name “Captain Marvel”. Marvel Comics never found much success with their Captain Marvel, but had to keep publishing books bearing the name lest they lose the trademark; as a result, Captain Marvel was constantly reconfigured, reimagined and rebooted, until the dust finally settled on Carol Danvers, the version of the superhero we recently saw on screen. Captain MarvelMarvel has been pumping out origin stories for a decade now, and there’s a formulaic element to the films that Captain Marvel admirably attempts to shake up, to mixed results. But we’ll have to wait and see which film accumulates more at the box office, and Captain Marvel looks likely to have already won that war.

Source: Forbes April 08, 2019 18:00 UTC