Ah, puberty...

deviantArt user nebezial is up to more mischief featured the good Captain and some of his JLA teammates. Click to embiggen or check the link above to see more cool artwork.

Your explanation makes my head hurt...

I woke up last night and, naturally, started thinking about story ideas for Captain Marvel. Because, really, when else does one naturally go over Captain Marvel stories?

Anyway, I started thinking about how DC wimped out and decided to refer to Billy's alter ego as "Shazam" from now on because they were afraid to take on The House of Mouse. (Grrrr....)

Anyway (again), at 3 in the morning, while thinking this over, I started to realize (4 years later, I know, but I can be a little slow) that this puts Captain Marvel Jr. in a bad spot. If there's no Captain Marvel, then there's no Captain Marvel Jr. because then there's no Captain Marvel for Freddy Freeman to idolize. And if there's no Captain Marvel, then that puts Mary Marvel in a bad spot too. And the 3 Lieutenant Marvels. And Hoppy the Marvel Bunny. And probably any other number of characters. I'm sure someone else had brought this up before because they're quicker on the uptake, but by this one wimpy decision DC's messed up a dozen or so characters in their library.

"How shortsighted that seems", I thought, and thus guaranteed that I wouldn't get any more sleep last night.

I'll be right there...

deviantArt user nebezial (doesn't that sound like a manga series?) plays off the fact that Billy's still a kid.

Captains Marvel!

Over at the Byrne Robotics forums, I found this little gem. Not only does Mr. Byrne offer a rendition of Mar-Vell's silver-haired look, but he also give him a pair of non-Nega-Band wrist blasters like he used to wear when he wore his green and white Kree togs!

Billy looks quite amused.

Time to welcome a new member to the Marvel Family!!

Everyone has been reporting about the new Ms. Marvel (but I get my info from The Beat, so that's what I'm linking to) and we're no exception here at The Clubhouse. Still, here's the New York Times article that the Beat gets its quotes from.

While the articles are short on specifics so far, we do have these details:

With most superheroes, when you take away the colorful costume, mask and cape, what you find underneath is a white man. But not always. In February, as part of a continuing effort to diversify its offerings, Marvel Comics will begin a series whose lead character, Kamala Khan, is a teenage Muslim girl living in Jersey City.

No exploding planet, death of a relative or irradiated spider led to Kamala’s creation. Her genesis began more mundanely, in a conversation between Sana Amanat and Steve Wacker, two editors at Marvel. “I was telling him some crazy anecdote about my childhood, growing up as a Muslim-American,” Ms. Amanat said. “He found it hilarious.” Ms. Amanat and Mr. Wacker noted the dearth of female superhero series and, even more so, of comics with cultural specificity.

The Beat goes on to explain Kamala's boxing glove hands and background:

Kamala has body-morphing powers, a power-set which sets her up for heroism – but also for problems at home, with her conservative family and social life. After she gains her powers, she’ll be taking on the Ms Marvel mantle in tribute to her hero, Carol Danvers, whom she will be attempting to follow in the steps of. In perhaps a telling quote from the announcement interview with George Gene Gustines, Wilson states:

Captain Marvel represents an ideal that Kamala pines for. She’s strong, beautiful and doesn’t have any of the baggage of being Pakistani and ‘different’.

Which speaks volumes about the personality of the character already. 

Jeepers, with hands like that, hopefully she (and Carol Danvers) will make an appearance in the next Marvel vs. Capcom game.

I'm looking forward to seeing how this pans out. It looks pretty exciting!

Random Panels

The always-amazing Ben Caldwell draws the good Captain (with inks by Derek Fridolfs and borrowed from his deviantArt page) in these panels from (I believe) a recent issue of Justice League Beyond. I'll have to check into this further. I'm not sure if this is a future version of Freddy Freeman or if it's still Billy Batson, but it's still pretty good and worth sharing!

Carol Danvers' Captain Marvel News

I have to figure out some way to differentiate Carol Danvers' current incarnation as Captain Marvel without constantly mentioning her name. But in the meantime, here's another story from The Beat talking about the relaunch of her title, with Kelly Sue DeConnick as writer and David Lopez on art.

Click on image to embiggen. Oh, and the image above is by Leinil Francis Yu, not David Lopez.

The comments below the article suggest that the book was not doing well, and that hopes for a stable creative team will help sales improve. Let's hope this is the case.