It's our yearly Comics Should Be Good Advent Calendar! Every day until Christmas Eve, you can click on the current day's Advent Calendar post and it will show the Advent Calendar with the door for that given day opened and you can see what the "treat" for that day will be! You can click here to see the previous Advent Calendar entries. This year, the theme is a Very Groovy 70s Christmas! Each day will be a Christmas comic book story from the 1970s, possibly ones that have a specific 1970s bent to it (depends on whether I can come up with 24 of them).

The drawing for this year's Advent Calendar, of Disco Santa Claus giving out 70s present, like a Simon, while disco dancing with four superheroes with the most-70s costumes around, is by Nick Perks.

Here it is...

And now, Day 4 will be opened (once opened, the door will feature a panel from the featured story)...

Today, we look at Christmas 1973's "The Year Without a Christmas" from Shazam #11 by Elliot S! Maggin and Kurt Schaffenberger.

Introduced at the end of 1939, Fawcett Comics' Captain Marvel soon became one of the most famous superheroes in the world. The novel idea that differentiated Captain Marvel from other superheroes was that the comic was not just about Captain Marvel, but it was also (heck, PRIMARILY it was) about young Billy Batson, a boy who got into all sorts of trouble and when he needed the help of Earth's Mightiest Mortal, Billy would shout out "Shazam!" and switch places with Captain Marvel, who would do his thing. Introduced by Bill Parker and C.C. Beck, the novel approach allowed the creators to tell traditional kid adventure stories and mix them with superhero stories. Otto Binder was the main writer on the Captain Marvel stories and he helped add an interesting mixture of fun science fiction and fantasy approaches to the stories. Over the years, Captain Marvel Jr. and Mary Marvel joined the cast. The main villain throughout the series was Doctor Sivana, a brilliant but evil scientist.

Okay, the downside of the immense popularity of Captain Marvel was that National Comics felt that he was too similar to their iconic Superman character. Once Captain Marvel even got his own live action film in 1941 (after Superman was enjoined from having his live action film at the time due to a deal with Paramount for Superman animated films), National sued Fawcett for copyright infringement. The case went on for years and eventually the courts sided with National (I doubt the same result would have occurred today) and rather than appeal, Fawcett just stopped doing superhero comic books (it was the early 50s by this point and sales had slumped anyways).

Two decades later, National Comics (now known as DC) approached Fawcett and offered to license the Marvel Family characters from the company. Fawcett agreed and DC launched a new Captain Marvel ongoing series in early 1973. The only trick was that in the time that Captain Marvel was in limbo, Marvel Comics had introduced a Captain Marvel of their own and they now owned the trademark on the name "Captain Marvel." So instead, DC had to title the book Shazam! in honor of the phrase that Billy said to transform into Captain Marvel. Shazam #1 was one of the most anticipated comics of all-time (as comic books weren't really ANTICIPATED period until the 1970s. They just sort of showed up. There wasn't hype about them before they came out).

Editor Julius Schwartz hired the original Captain Marvel artist, C.C. Beck, to draw the series, which was written by Denny O'Neil and Elliot S! Maggin, with each issue including an O'Neil lead story, a Maggin back-up and then a reprint of an old Captain Marvel story. Eventually, O'Neil left the series and was replaced by E. Nelson Bridwell and Bob Oksner and Kurt Schaffenberger (Schaffenberger had worked on Captain Marvel earlier in his career) began to split art duties with Beck before Beck was gone entirely before Shazam #11.

The concept for the series was that the Marvel Family all live on a distinct Earth of their own and Sivana had trapped them in suspended animation for twenty years. They were now back and ready to fight the good fight again.

In "The Year Without a Christmas," Billy Batson and his friends and family celebrate Christmas Eve together when Doctor Sivana and Sivana's son and daughter conspire to, in effect, "steal Christmas"...

Sivan's plan was to create a cosmic clock that he could then move forward, pushing the time in the day forward, so that all of Christmas would last just ten minutes! When the Marvel Family flew into action, they encounter Santa Claus and his reindeer (it's a weird bit, as there's this whole, "Is that REALLY Santa?" Who ELSE could it be?).

Luckily, Sivana has underestimated the power of Santa Claus. His whole deal is that he knows who has been naughty and who has been nice and he's seeing you while you're awake and/or asleep, so Santa was able to tell the Marvel Family the location of Sivana's secret headquarters. When the heroes arrive, Sivana taunts Captain Marvel by suggesting that he has no chance of slowing the clock down. Not only does he not slow it down, he actually moves it back in a tremendous show of strength by the Marvel Family!

Christmas is now saved, but before the heroes go back to their Christmas party, they first present Sivana with a present! He's always talking about wanting to rule the universe, so they get him his own personal copy of the book "The Universe," for him to "rule" over.

Funny stuff.

WAS THIS A PARCTICULARLY GROOVY CHRISTMAS STORY?

I would say no. Yes, the Shazam stories were specifically noted as being modern, they sure don't feel that way. They still feel timeless, so not very "groovy."

As noted before, I do have 24 stories picked out, but I would be happy to hear from some of you for suggestions for Christmas comic book stories that you can think of that are distinctively 1970s (and, of course, FROM the 1970s). You can e-mail suggestions to me at brianc@cbr.com