In the latest Comic Book Legends Revealed, see how close DC came to getting C.C. Beck to return to drawing Shazam by letting him write his own scripts.

Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the eight hundred and eleventh installment where we examine three comic book legends and determine whether they are true or false. As usual, there will be three posts, one for each of the three legends. Click here for the first part of this installment's legends.

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COMIC LEGEND:

DC tried to get C.C. Beck to return to Shazam! by allowing him to write his own scripts to draw, but after heavily editing his fist try at his own script, Beck just basically quit again.

STATUS:

True

Debuting 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.

Beck drew the series throughout its time at Fawcett. However, a long lawsuit by National Comics (later DC) saw Fawcett abandon its superhero comics in the 1950s, and Captain Marvel disappeared. In the 1970s, DC cut a deal with Fawcett to license Captain Marvel for new comics (now called Shazam! since Marvel had trademarked the name Captain Marvel in the late 1960s).

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.

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The problem is that the combination of these modern writers and the classic Beck were...not good. 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. O'Neil and Maggin were sort of stuck between the idea of updating the mythos and sticking to the original concept and Beck just HATED their scripts. Eventually, O'Neil left the series and E. Nelson Bridwell took over his part of the book.

Beck would make slight changes to the copy of the stories and these would be changed by DC's editorial, pissing EVERYone off in the process (Beck because he thought he was helping improve the stories and the writers because they didn't want Beck messing with their stuff).

Eventually, Beck just outright refused to draw two of Maggin's scripts. He figured DC would try to fight to keep him by getting him better scripts. Instead, they just gave the scripts to other artists and prepared to move forward without Beck. Bridwell, though, the writer that Beck liked the best of the modern writers, fought to keep Beck. He told Beck that Beck could try writing his own script for the series.

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Beck was happy to do so and so Beck came up with a story involving the Seven Deadly Sins tormenting Billy Batson and Captain Marvel. He then did not hear from DC for months, until finally, six months after Beck sent in his script, Bridwell returned the script heavily marked up, with the story greatly simplified from Beck's original, with some changes just being particularly odd (the Seven put a curse on a drawing to mess with Captain Marvel, while in Bridwell's version, the Seven acquire a "dream inducer" device that they hide on the drawing to mess with Billy.

There's a sequence where Uncle Dudley is hanging on to Captain Marvel's leg while Marvel is flying that Beck really hated.

Beck hated the edited script, but he initially tried to play ball and he started to draw the edited script, but when he hit the Dudley on Captain Marvel's leg scene he just got disgusted and tore the whole thing and threw the story into the trash. Beck returned the edited script to DC and told them he wanted nothing to do with it and even Bridwell gave up on trying to contact Beck anymore and that was it for the comic book great and DC (Bridwell, though, continued to hold Beck in high regard, giving interviews where he talked about Beck in very complimentary tones).

The great Captain Marvel expert, P.C. Hamerlinck, has an incredibly in-depth write-up on this whole deal (with a detailed description of the original Beck script and the re-written Bridwell script) that he co-wrote with Roy Thomas in Alter Ego #7 from TwoMorrows. You can read it here.

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OK, that's it for this installment!

Thanks to Brandon Hanvey for the Comic Book Legends Revealed logo, which I don't even actually anymore, but I used it for years and you still see it when you see my old columns, so it's fair enough to still thank him, I think.

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