DC's Captain Marvel Officially Changing His Name to the Non-Trademark Infringing 'Shazam'

When Captain Marvel finally makes his belated entry into DC's September-launched New 52 iverse, he'll do so with one rather big change: He'll no longer be Captain Marvel, but Shazam. Writer and DC Chief Creative Officer Geoff Johns, who will be reintroducing the character in the "Curse of Shazam" back-up strip that will begin running in March's Justice League #7, explained the name change in a Newsarama interview.

"Well, there are a lot of reasons for the change," Johns said. "One is that everybody thinks he's Shazam already, outside of comics. It's also, for all sorts of reasons, calling him Shazam just made sense for us. And, you know, every comic book he's in right now has Shazam on the cover."

If one of those reasons seems a little vague, Johns does promise that the change will make sense within the story itself, which Johns is creating with his Action Comics and Batman: Earth-One artist collaborator Gary Frank.

This also isn't the first time DC has tried to change the Captain's name in order to make the name of the star match the title of the comic.

The character was originally created in 1940 for the long-defunct publisher Fawcett Comics, who ceased publication of their Captain Marvel in the early 50s under legal pressure from DC Comics, who claimed the character infringed on Superman. In 1967, while that Captain Marvel was still in publishing limbo, Marvel Comics created their own character with the name of "Captain Marvel," and trademarked it. So when DC eventually gained the rights to publish former rival Fawcett's Captain Marvel, they couldn't call him that on the covers of any books featuring him.

Instead DC has focused on "Shazam," which is both the name of the ancient wizard who granted young orphan Billy Batson the magical ability to transform into the Superman-like Captain Marvel and the magic word by which the transformation is affected. So DC's 1970s revival was titled simply Shazam!, and over the years we've seen books entitled The Power of Shazam, Shazam: The Monster Society of Evil, The Trials of Shazam, Billy Batson and The Magic of Shazam and now, of course, Johns and Frank's upcoming Curse of Shazam.

It was during 2006's Trials series, by writer Judd Winick, that DC most recently tried changing the Captain's name. In that story, Captain Marvel took the place of the dead wizard Shazam, taking the still legally problematic name "Marvel." Meanwhile Captain Marvel's protegee, Captain Marvel Jr., took over for Captain Marvel, and started going by the name "Shazam." (If the previous sentences don't make a whole lot of sense, you can see why Winick's reorganization of the franchise didn't last long).

Johns' stated reasons for the change are probably depressingly telling of DC Comics' increased focus on turning their comics line into something of an intellectual property farm for corporate owners Warner Brothers to exploit in other media, adopting the model Marvel also took on in the aughts when various Hollywood studios combed through The House of Ideas' character catalog looking for raw material for blockbuster franchises.

Everyone "outside of comics" thinks Captain Marvel is Shazam anyway, and the long under-discussion movie, which Johns also discusses in the same interview, will also be called Shazam, so why not just change the character's name to fit public perception?

Depending on how dramatically Johns reboots Captain Marvel's origin, the name-change could prove rather problematic for the character in the story itself. After all, every time Billy Batson says "Shazam," there's a roar of thunder, and he's struck by a bolt of magical lightning, transforming him into Captain Marvel. And every time Captain Marvel says "Shazam," the same thing happens, only he transforms back into Batson. But if the word that gives him power doubles as his code name, will Batson be afraid to speak it for fear of exposing his secret identity, thereby rendering him powerless?

Yes, many who only know the character casually call him Shazam. But if Captain Marvel Junior not being able to call himself by his own name is stupid, does transferring this problem to the Big Red Cheese himself somehow make it less stupid?

All right, I'll be the one to piss in the pool: While this is wistful for historical sentimental reasons, it's such a painfully obviously reasonable business decision, it's really really surprising it didn't happen a long time ago.

Ford doesn't make a car called the Ford Chevy, Apple doesn't make an OS called Apple Windows, and it is no less ridiculous that DC has a superhero called Captain Marvel. Why on earth would any company want to sow that kind of confusion?

It is sixty years since DC sued Fawcett, and forty years since they started publishing the character themselves -- and as I recall from our Captain Marvel retrospective discussion last year, most of the fans who dig the original Fawcett version of the character think that DC's been doing it wrong ever since. So what is there to mourn by now anyway? At this point, generations later, what's a name change?

All right, I'll be the one to piss in the pool: While this is wistful for historical sentimental reasons, it's such a painfully obviously reasonable business decision, it's really really surprising it didn't happen a long time ago.

Ford doesn't make a car called the Ford Chevy, Apple doesn't make an OS called Apple Windows, and it is no less ridiculous that DC has a superhero called Captain Marvel. Why on earth would any company want to sow that kind of confusion?

It is sixty years since DC sued Fawcett, and forty years since they started publishing the character themselves -- and as I recall from our Captain Marvel retrospective discussion last year, most of the fans who dig the original Fawcett version of the character think that DC's been doing it wrong ever since. So what is there to mourn by now anyway? At this point, generations later, what's a name change?

Because it's a business decision based solely on the merchandising of the character, disregarding the character itself.

There's no confusion when it comes to the comic book Captain Marvel. Readers either know the difference between Shazam and Captain Marvel, or they pick up the difference after reading the opening blurb of every issue. This has worked for forty years.