In "Follow the Path," I spotlight changes made to comic book characters that are based on outside media, as well as characters who entirely came from outside media. I’m sure you can think of other examples, so feel free to e-mail me at brianc@cbr.com if you want to suggest some other examples for future installments.

Today, we look at how the Shazam! comic book series from the 1970s tried to adapt itself to fit the then-popular Shazam! TV series.

The highly anticipated Shazam! series from DC Comics debuted in 1973. This was the return of the original Captain Marvel in new stories for the first time in twenty years, with the series' original artist, C.C. Beck, along for the ride.

Very quickly, though, it became apparent that there were some major problems with the series. First of all, one of the reasons why Fawcett stopped doing superhero comic books in the early 1950s was because sales were down a lot on their superhero books. The sales had gone low enough that they figured that it just no longer made financial sense to fight the lawsuit that they were dealing with with National Comics (DC) over Captain Marvel supposedly infringing on Superman's copyright. So the company just settled with National and ceased publishing new superhero comics. In other words, even twenty years earlier, sales weren't doing great on Captain Marvel comics, so to pick-up 20 years later wasn't necessarily like they were picking up from the series at the height of its popularity.

Secondly, the whole 20 years deal also meant that for a whole generation (or two, even!) of comic book fans, they didn't even know who Captain Marvel really was anymore.

Thirdly, the decision to keep the stories essentially stuck in the past and then have a very modern writer in Denny O'Neil write the book was a curious choice.

Whatever the reasoning, the book did not exactly launch off the shelves.

However, a year after the comic book debuted, Filmation also debuted a Shazam! TV series and that series was very popular...

The concept of the show was that young Billy Batson would travel the country in a mobile home with an older man named Mentor...

When they were in trouble, Billy would say his magic word, "Shazam!" and turn into Captain Marvel.

The show was a big hit and ran for three seasons of new episodes and continued in re-runs for a while after that (it was soon paired with a female riff on the Captain Marvel concept called Isis).

Since the show was such a success, it was only logical for DC to think, "Hey, maybe we should adapt the premise of our comic book to match the TV series?" And so that's precisely what they did...

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The first thing that we saw in Shazam! #25 (by E. Nelson Bridwell, Kurt Schaffenberger and Vince Colletta), is that Billy's hair was grown out a bit to give him a bit of the shaggy hair that Billy wore on the TV series...

At the end of the story, the evil Dr. Sivana threatened to destroy various cities across the United States. The problem for Captain Marvel and Billy is that Billy was set just in New York. Billy's boss at the TV station, though, had an idea...

In the next issue, Billy's hair got even more shaggy...

And the Wizard called Billy to attention and there was Dudley, the so-called "Uncle Marvel" character, who has now grown a mustache and looks suspiciously like Mentor from the TV series.

The Wizard suggests that Billy and Dudley travel the country to stop Sivana and the Wizard specifically tells Dudley that he has to be Billy's Mentor...

The Wizard also gives Billy a special device to call on any of the SHAZAM gods for help...

Meanwhile, Billy's job gives him a special motor home to travel the country to cover Sivana's crimes and Dudley becomes the driver...

Check out their first trip, where Billy explicitly calls Dudley his Mentor...

Clever stuff from Bridwell. The sales on the comic didn't really go up that much, but it was still a good idea to try to tie in with the popular Shazam TV series.

That's it for this installment of Follow the Path! If anyone else has a suggestion for a comic book character changing due to TV or movies, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!