The Marvel Family included: Tall Marvel? Fat Marvel? Hill Marvel?... [Archive]

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The Shadow

01-20-2006, 12:46 PM

What the hell is THAT all about?

Could someone fill me in on this? I bought some World's Finest comics off eBay and I was reading them when I came across Tall Marvel, Fat Marvel and Hill Marvel... all who had the power of Shazam.

... :confused:

Who are they? Are they still around? How did they get their powers? How long were they around?

Thanks.

Agentum

01-20-2006, 12:59 PM

Hill Marvel :D
Describe that one please.

That shazam guy must have given out god powers to anyone, but i don't think all those is around.
Mary Marvel, Capt. Marvel and Black Adam is known to me.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Marvel_Family

"They have not appeared in Marvel Family stories since the early 1980s, having been retconned out of existence during the Crisis on Infinite Earths."

DDM

01-20-2006, 01:04 PM

Here is the pre-Crisis Earth-S Marvel Family:

http://www.joinme.net/testdrive/Marvel_Family.jpg

f. chong rutherford

01-20-2006, 01:08 PM

They were three boys who all were named 'Billy Batson.' 'Fat' Billy Batson was from Brooklyn, and met the other two in an adventure where all three travelled to Fawcett City to meet their famous namesake. 'Fat' gave them all nicknames to tell them apart. 'Tall Billy' was a tall cowboy kid. 'Fat Billy' was an overweight Brooklyn kid. 'Hill Billy' was from the South.

When 'Tall', 'Fat' and 'Hill' said the word 'SHAZAM!' together, they were transformed into the 'Lt. Marvels.' This only worked if all three of them were together and said the magic word at the same time. They agreed to only use their powers if asked by Captain Marvel.

Fat Marvel at The Marvel Family Web
http://www.marvelfamily.com/WhosWho/whoswho.asp?castid=350

Oggar

01-20-2006, 01:28 PM

Oh and it's much, much worse. There was a Marvel Bunny, Uncle Dudley... they should have just left them all corpses after crisis but no Mary Marvel shows up and then the rediculously named Capt. Marvel jr. Corpses alongside the Superpets but they had to bring back the damn dog too. Sorry rant over.

JulianPerez

01-20-2006, 01:51 PM

Wow, the Marvel Family was terrific! C.C. Beck and Otto Binder were two of the greatest writers that ever lived, and certainly the two greatest of the golden age. Nothing is more extraordinary than seeing the Marvel Family charge against the Crocodile Men from Punkus's lair on top of giant butterflies. While Jerry Ordway's 2000s Captain Marvel was entertaining and worthy, it suffers in the comparison to the old school version.

How about a reprint collection, DC, eh?

"Hill Marvel" is actually known by the radioactively politically incorrect moniker of "Hillbilly Marvel." Towards the end of the Marvel run, Hillbilly Marvel became a country singer in Nashville.

Tall Marvel was from Texas, Fat Marvel was a contentious chubby fellow from Brooklyn.

All of them dwelt on Earth-S, where they were all temporarily trapped inside of Dr. Sivana's Hibernaculum, featuring his rare supermetal, Hibernium, which cast them into suspended animation.

There was also Hoppy the Marvel Bunny, and Uncle Marvel, who had no superpowers, but the other Marvel Family members loved Uncle Marvel so much they made him think that he did.

There was also a Sivana family to counter Captain Marvel's own family, which included the only two "good" members of the Sivana Family, Beautia and Magnificus, who were raised on the planet Venus, home to mushrooms and a surreal race. In addition to Sivana's two homely children, including Sivana, Jr.

Buried Alien

01-20-2006, 02:09 PM

There was also a Sivana family to counter Captain Marvel's own family, which included the only two "good" members of the Sivana Family, Beautia and Magnificus, who were raised on the planet Venus, home to mushrooms and a surreal race. In addition to Sivana's two homely children, including Sivana, Jr.

On that note, there was also one occassion (DC COMICS PRESENTS ANNUAL, 1984) when Sivana himself hijacked the Shazam powers and turned himself into Captain (then Major, then Colonel, then General as he vanquished additional enemies) Sivana. He managed to subdue Captain Marvel, Superman of Earth-Two, and Superman of Earth-One before he was finally brought down.

Buried Alien (The Fastest Post Alive!)

The Shadow

01-20-2006, 02:18 PM

Wow... that's some lame stuff! LOL

Thanks for all the great help guys!

Buried Alien

01-20-2006, 02:26 PM

Wow... that's some lame stuff! LOL

Actually, it was one of the better latter-day Earth-S era Captain Marvel stories. You might want to track it down and give it a read. Things were looking pretty bleak for a while until Solomon, Hercules, Achilles, Zeus, Atlas, and Mercury reminded Captain Marvel why he was given the Power of Shazam.

Buried Alien (The Fastest Post Alive!)

Agentum

01-20-2006, 02:34 PM

Is the Power of Shazam series any good?

The Shadow

01-20-2006, 02:53 PM

You might want to track it down and give it a read.
I just might!

I'm slowly filling the holes in collection... and this summer my 19,000 comics that are 3000 miles away will be reunited with me! So we'll see!

Thanks.

The Shadow

01-20-2006, 02:53 PM

Is the Power of Shazam series any good?
The Ordway series from the 90's? I thought so... but I haven't read it in years.

Agentum

01-20-2006, 03:02 PM

Yes that one, 94 to 99 or something like that.

The Adventurer

01-20-2006, 03:11 PM

It was the Golden Age. Try not to think about it so hard.

The Shadow

01-20-2006, 03:19 PM

It was the Golden Age. Try not to think about it so hard.
Actually the Worlds Finest book I got with everyone in it was from 1979!

The Adventurer

01-20-2006, 03:22 PM

Buried Alien

01-20-2006, 03:25 PM

Well the Silverage was pretty silly too. I guess DC would have had the reigns by that point.

Actualy the Lt. Marvels all appear in Crisis on Infinite Earths. If you look closely they're all on the big Alex Ross cover/poster.

The Lt. Marvels got all of one panel in COIE. That was as much of a final farewell as they were going to get.

By the time DC started publishing any comics involving the Marvel Family, however, the Silver Age was over. No Marvel Family stories were published by DC until 1973 and by then, the Bronze Age was well under way.

The first SHAZAM! comics by DC, however, were done by C.C. Beck and seemed like a Golden Age anachronism (and hence, didn't sell well in the mid-70s). With the debut of the CBS Saturday morning SHAZAM! live action TV show about a year or two later, the SHAZAM! comics switched gears and tried to be more like the TV show. That worked until the show got cancelled after three seasons.

Buried Alien (The Fastest Post Alive!)

DDM

01-20-2006, 03:32 PM

Calybos

01-20-2006, 05:06 PM

And let's not forget the major villainous role played by Mr. Mind...

Wannabe

01-20-2006, 05:24 PM

I hope now that Shazam is dead, Uncle Marvel becomes the bestower of the power.

Black Atom

01-20-2006, 06:07 PM

All the extra Marvels were pretty bad. I don't mind Mary Marvel so much and Captain Marvel Jr is really pushing it (if there are so many Marvels that one can't even introduce himself without changing, then it's time to stop).

I actually kind of like Mr. Mind and Tawky Tawny, though, as insane as it sounds. If WW can hang out with that minotaur guy, I'm all for Cap hanging out with a talking tiger.

gorosaurus

01-20-2006, 11:26 PM

Don't forget "Freckles" Marvel, a young girl who admired Mary and dressed up in a home-made Marvel costume to help her with her adventures. She was a fraud, like Uncle Marvel.

LtMarvel

01-21-2006, 01:18 PM

Freckles and Uncle Marvel actually made the 1980s animated TV show.

Fawcett wanted to duplicate Captain Marvel's sales by duplicating Captain Marvel. The Lt Marvels didn't work out, so Captain Marvel, Jr was the next attempt. Jr was drawn more realistic. His magic words was "Captain Marvel" so readers wouldn't forget there was a Captain Marvel. In the story, Captain Marvel had to give Freddy Freeman some of the Shazam powers so Freddy could survive his injuries from Captain Nazi. Since Cap gave him his powers Freddy had to say "Captain Marvel" instead of "Shazam." Sales of the spin-off were good.

The story goes that a young man handed his barber a copy of Captain Marvel, Jr and asked for a haircut just like the coverboy. The young man later adopted cape and lightning bolt jewlery to his stage show as Elvis Presley.

Mary, who turned out to be Billy's long lost sister, was less successful. She was given her own set of powers from female gods (although the writers goofed and the Z godess turned out to be male!). Her adventures tended to be more in the realms of magic than the other Marvels.

And of course, they all got to gether in the Marvel Family Comics. Black Adam appeared in #1, ending up dead until Sivana revived him in the 1970s.

After the famed DC-Fawcett lawsuit was settled, the Marvels were out of business. Fawcett settled due to poor comic book sales, and it agreed never to publish the Marvels without DC's permission again. (Hoppy lived on, changing his costume and magic word and became known as the "Magic Bunny.")

"Captain Marvel" and "Marvel" became public domain names and were snatched up. I'm not clear on what became of the comic book company that took those names. Someday, I'll have to do some more research.

In the 1970s, someone at DC had the idea of leasing the Marvel Family from Fawcett. So the characters were leased on a per panel basis. In the 1990s, prior to the Power of Shazam! graphic novel and series, DC purchased the Fawcett characters (Marvel Family plus other heroes). This is why they appear more frequently today than before (Shazam! never reached monthly status, not even as a back-up in World's Finest).

stealthwise

01-21-2006, 01:29 PM

This entire thread shows exactly why we need the Shazam and the Marvel characters on their own separate Earth. Everything that makes them unique and interesting doesn't fit in at all with the current DCU.

Agentum

01-21-2006, 03:37 PM

It's a lot of resemblence between these Marvel heroes and Marvel/Miracleman.
Why is it soo?
Was the creators of Marvelman fans of the older superheroes?

The Adventurer

01-21-2006, 04:08 PM

Marvel/MiracleMan was a total rip off of Captain Marvel and co.

Alan Moore was the one who took them the violent route and made them memerible and helped kick off the "edgy" 80s.

David O Burcham

01-21-2006, 09:09 PM

I'll take the Shazam Family over Wildstorm, Image, Vertigo, All-Star DC, and Ultimate Marvel any day.

Zeta

01-21-2006, 09:49 PM

Alan Moore was the one who took them the violent route and made them memerible and helped kick off the "edgy" 80s.

Only Moore would write a story about a Captain Marvel Jr. equivalent being anal raped by teenage boys and then going on a killing spree. Of course, if it had been Judd Winnick, he might've enjoyed it . . .

The Shadow

01-21-2006, 11:08 PM

Freckles and Uncle Marvel actually made the 1980s animated TV show

//SNIP//.
Thanks for a great an interesting read.

Bicycle-Repairman

01-22-2006, 12:13 PM

"Captain Marvel" and "Marvel" became public domain names and were snatched up. I'm not clear on what became of the comic book company that took those names. Someday, I'll have to do some more research.

Before Marvel Comics introduced their Captain Marvel (a Kree soldier turned super-hero named Capt. Mar-Vell) in 1967, a company called MF Enterprises published yet another character named Captain Marvel in 1966. MF Enterprises' Captain Marvel was an android who escaped the destruction of his home planet (borrowing elements from the original Human Torch and Superman) and could shoot segments of his body out from their sockets by saying "Split!". On Earth, MF Enterprises' Captain Marvel adopted the human alter ego of Roger Winkle and had a kid sidekick named Billy Baxton.

Reptisaurus!

01-22-2006, 12:35 PM

Worth Noting:

In the original Fawcett comics of the fourties, the "Lieutenant Marvels" had only a handful of appearances. (The more popular Junior and Mary basically pushed 'em off the map.)

Hoppy the Marvel Bunny didn't hang out with the others; He essentially occupied an alternate dimension, similar to DC's Earth-Two. Roy Thomas "canonized" this is a 1980-or-so DC Comics presents, the first time Ca'n and Hoppy ever met.

Personal side note: The only Golden Age comic I collect is Hoppy the Marvel Bunny.

However Mister Tawny, the Talking Tiger hung out with the regular Marvels. (Although I've heard devout fourties Captain Marvel fans argue that the introduction of Tawky Tawny was the "Jump the Shark" moment for the series, and it never got good again.)

Bicycle-Repairman

01-22-2006, 03:01 PM

It's a lot of resemblence between these Marvel heroes and Marvel/Miracleman.
Why is it soo?
Was the creators of Marvelman fans of the older superheroes?

Marvelman (later renamed Miracleman) debuted in Marvelman #25. The first 24 issues of the series were British reprints of Fawcett Comics' Captain Marvel Adventures. After Fawcett discontinued publishing Captain Marvel due to a lawsuit from rival DC Comics over the character's similarities to Superman, British publisher Leonard Miller created Marvelman to take the place of the Captain Marvel reprints.

LtMarvel

01-23-2006, 06:34 AM

Before Marvel Comics introduced their Captain Marvel (a Kree soldier turned super-hero named Capt. Mar-Vell) in 1967, a company called MF Enterprises published yet another character named Captain Marvel in 1966. MF Enterprises' Captain Marvel was an android who escaped the destruction of his home planet (borrowing elements from the original Human Torch and Superman) and could shoot segments of his body out from their sockets by saying "Split!". On Earth, MF Enterprises' Captain Marvel adopted the human alter ego of Roger Winkle and had a kid sidekick named Billy Baxton.
Heh, I was referring to this "Marvel Comics" that was so brazen as to take the family name as the company name. I never heard what became of this company.

stealthwise

01-23-2006, 08:05 PM

Only Moore would write a story about a Captain Marvel Jr. equivalent being anal raped by teenage boys and then going on a killing spree. Of course, if it had been Judd Winnick, he might've enjoyed it . . .

I don't mind if they do it with an equivalent... it's when the stuff becomes canon with long-time established characters that it's irritating.

Shellhead

01-23-2006, 08:45 PM