"I was Shazammed!"

Wished I'd taped a copy of last night's Justice league Unlimited. Sometimes I do, just because I enjoy watching that series so much, but I turned it on just at the last moment remembering the time and didn't have an extra tape, so I just sat there and thoroughly enjoyed myself for 30 minutes.

This was probably because it starred the original "Captain Marvel". I was much too young to appreciate The Big Red Cheese when I was a kid. Superman was originally released in 1938, then a couple years later, Fawcett started publishing Captain Marvel. And anyone that's anyone in comic reading circles I'm sure knows that DC Comics and Fawcett had this court battle for 23 years due to DC claiming too much similiarity to its most popular character, resulting in all of CM's titles to be cancelled in 1953.

Well, in '53 I was only 2 year old, so I didn't actually see any Cap's until I was in my pre-teen years. Maybe that's wrong. My brother may have actually had just a few, because I know when I did finally see him it was in Jules Fieffers' The Great Comic Book Heroes (circa 1965) and he didn't look all that unfamiliar. Or, perhaps it was because I'd already seen images of him in various early 60's fanzines; can't recall. But it wasn't too long until I actually came across a handful of his adventures in trades from various collectors in the area, and soon was a fan of the whole Fawcett Marvel Family.

So in 1973 when DC started publishing Captain Marvel again (this time calling his title Shazam! since Marvel Comics already had a character with the same name), I eagerly snatched up every issue!

But, getting back to the JLUnlmt. episode, this was perhaps the best one they've ever done. In all those years since '73, DC's had a few minor battles between Supes and CM, but nothing like what was shown on this animated episode. For one thing, the whole episode was very gritty. CM was shown true to character, and Superman actually played a bit as "the bad guy". And when they did have their battle, it really sounded like what I would expect an unstoppable force striking an unmovable object to sound like! Just really, very excellant!

'Can't wait until I catch it on re-runs 'cause this time I'll have that VHS tape ready!