The First Fanboy Appeal

With the Earth-2 stuff isn't the story that they were getting a couple of letters from fans saying "Oh I remember the old Flash, wouldn't it be cool if they could meet?", and they thought yeah, good story idea, and then it took off. So the lines are definitely blurred.

Given that presumably mailbags were a big, big part of what passed for 'market research' in the 60s a lot of decisions would have had "fanboy appeal" - which villains to bring back, and so on.

I'm curious though -- was anyone really pandering for the return of Mar-Vell? I mean, to my knowledge that book was never a top seller, and they have no reason to believe that there's enough of an audience still buying comics who would actually purchase a new Captain Marvel series. So all they've done is bring back one of the few characters who actually stayed dead for a few decades, which is totally cheap.

Err, I meant to type "was anyone really CLAMORING for the return of Mar-Vell?"

They certainly weren't clamouring for him to return in this totally lame fashion. "Will you run our prison?" ???!!??!???!!!!???????!?!?

AARGH what is it with Paul Jenkins and his thing about shit innocence and experience stories - The Sentry, fucking Penance, and now THIS, oh Mar-Vell will find that the universe has CHANGED yes CHANGED never bright confident morning again and he knows he's going to get cancer JUST LIKE THE MARVEL UNIVERSE GOT THE CANCER OF MISTRUST EH.

Ha - that sort of shit was the hallmark of his Spidey run, too, it seems. DAMN YOU JENKINS!

I think Marvel have to do a new Captain Marvel comic every so often to keep copyright on the name/screw over DC's Shazam franchise

Mort Weisinger wld apparently regularly visit schools and ask the kids what stories they wld like to see in Superman - partly explaining the 'childlike' oddness of 'Superman becomes a tramp', 'Superman turns into a giant turtle' etc

Srsly he's worse than Geoff Johns by a mile.

Not Mort Weisinger obv.

Part of the reason I created this thread was due to the one comment I saw on That Comic News Website, where a commentor was stoked that Mar-Vell was returning, as CM was a favorite of his from back in the day when the stories were originally published.

I imagine the whole Death of Captain Marvel Saga might've once possessed this aura of mystery & wonder surrounding it, thanks to ed. note captions & the lack of easily obtainable copies of the actual dopey story (the way crap like Project: Pegasus or The Korvac Saga or the Kree / Skrull War did) (Tom talked about this once; forget where), but it's the sort of dumpster diving that seems to unfairly trade on this mystique, while simultaneously pandering strictly to a small sect of folks that actually care about his return. And all the Zombies that gotta catch 'em all.

Maybe my bone of contention is that the same folks what, for example, wrote in to DC about bringing back Jay Garrick are possibly the same folks that joined HEAT & pined for the return of their Hal Jordan. Tho the difference between fans them & fans now is probably the same difference that separates the comic pros of the early Silver Age and the fans-turned-pros that joined the industry in the early-to-mid 70s (or, in Roy the Boy's case, earlier) - some sort of backasswards need to respect what once was to a ridiculous degree.

[xpost]

oh no Tom

You have to feel for Jim Starlin, who surely must have thought that by freighting the Death of CM with such maximum sadface significance he had made it pretty much irreversible.

Anything I felt for Jim Starlin died when I started reading Infinity War. Bastard.

Having just read CW: The R I'm flabbergasted by the terrifyingly bad plotting. It reads like "Hey, Captain Marvel! You're back from the dead. Great, we need somebody to run our prison. Come over here and stand in front of these monitors for a bit."

It's not so much THE RETURN!!!!! as 'The Day Captain Marvel Turned Up And We Got Him To Put Up A Shelf'.

They should make that the angle for the whole series.

"Tony...the world seems so...changed. Old friend, I'm not sure if I'm ready. I'm not sure if I know what it means any more. To be...a hero."

"What? Sorry? Oh, right, no worries Captain M. Actually though, we've got this bit of data entry work that needs doing. With your cosmic awareness you're the only guy that can do it. Right? Great!"

CIVIL WAR: THE APPRAISAL

Can one of you explain how it is that Captain Marvel is back from the dead in the first place?

He fell through space and time from an age when he was, as they say, not so dead. And now he has understood his eventual fate, and must face the world knowing that Tony Stark sent plastic flowers to his funeral.

"Flash of Two Worlds" wasn't intended to be the fanboy appeal that it was: like Tom suggests, Julie Schwartz did interact with the likes of JSA crazees like Roy and his pal Jerry Bails (who died a month or so ago) who would ask "what about Jay?" I bet he said "what the fuck, let's bring him back, and we'll be onto something else next month." Little did he know…

Schwartz, Fox, Kanigher and guys like them initially figured that their audience was juvenile and were a little surprised to get erudite correspondence from 20-ish 30ish guys asking about Per Degaton, Woozy Winks or some obscure plot point about All Star Comics 54. Weisinger was contemptuous of fanboys (and apparently everyone else ever in the history of the world), and resisted any encroachment onto his Super-fiefdom.

So "Flash of Two Worlds" was a response to correspondence along those lines, but one that had consequences that took over the fukking industry, which I'm sure befuddled the hell out of Schwartz and Fox…

What caused Mar Vell to fall through space and time? Something to do with the Civil War story, or is this totally unconnected, and like when politicians tack pork spending on to a bill? I guess it's like that no matter what...

CRISIS IN INFINITE MAILBAGS

and I would like to say that, having finished 2/3rds of Lost Girls, CRISIS takes on a whole new rofflicious connotation.

As for Mar-Vell: maybe Galactus farted.

Or Eternity went bowling.

THUS BRAPPED DORMAMMU

nb - this is all internal monologue, pretty much the entire story is.

"A lifetime has passed since..."

"...you floated in negative space, meditating."

"Pondering an oh-so-important matter you've since forgotten."

"Why don't you REMEMBER, Mar-vell?"

"Something DISTRACTED you."

"It was a miniscule anomaly -- a crease in the fabric of time and space."

"You felt nothing more than a mild curiousity as you reached out to investigate."

"A surge of subtle energy coursed through your nega-bands."

"Only in such a manner does the very nature of the universe ever truly CHANGE."

(poit)

So basically it could be Civil War related, it could be what-he-was-thinking-related, it could be anything. The impression is definitely that all this (IE the ongoing Captain Marvel series) could happen between any two panels in an old CM story.

Schwartz had roots in Science Fiction fandom so I don't think he was THAT befuddled by Comic Book fandom - in fact, I think his experience as a SF fan/agent taught him how to cultivate/encourage fans, chiefly by printing their addresses in the letter columns of his comics

True dat re: cultivating fans.

But my point was more that I'd guess that he was probly a bit amazed that DC and Marvel eventually geared their output towards continuity-crazed 20-something guys writing in to say "B-B-B-B-But how could Iris have not known that the Golden Glider and Captain Cold were not dating? In issue #&$)%&^, she saw them at the Malt Shoppe, staring dreamily in one another's eyes" etc etc etc. I bet he thought "hey guys, calm down. Its just juvenile fiction."