Museum of Comic Book Advertising - Hall of Comic Book Covers

Canadian Edition of Whiz Comics
Number 99
July 1948
Anglo-American Publishing Company

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Whiz Comics Number 99 Canadian Edition July 1948

The World's Mightiest Mortal & Big Red Cheese

No review of the golden age of comic books can overlook Captain Marvel as a central figure. He was arguably the most popular comic book ever, selling 1.4 million copies bi-weekly in Captain Marvel Adventures. He simultaneously appeared in Whiz Comics and spawned an more than an entire family of heroes. He spawned an industry.

Captain Marvel Jr., Mary Marvel, Uncle Marvel and even Hoppy the Marvel Bunny exploited Captain Marvels brand name. Fawcett's comic book titles lead the industry in sales and popularity.

Captain Marvel appeared June of 1940, less than 2 years after Superman made his debut. There was little doubt from the start that Fawcett Publishing sought to copy National Periodical Publication's success and grab a piece of the exploding market created by the Superman and Batman characters. This blatant attempt to copy and recreate the successes of National Periodicals turned out to be Captain Marvel's true vulnerability.

Captain Marvel was the creation of writer Bill Parker and artist C. C. Beck, although the majority of the Marvel stories were written by Otto Binder. Together, Binder and Beck brought a sense of fun, light heartedness and fantasy to their comic that was markedly different from anything being offered by National Periodical Publications. No other superhero would dare be known by such a silly sobriquet as The Big Red Cheese.

The extremely imaginative villians, such as the alien worm Mr. Mind who appeared in an amazingly long and detailed story that developed over two years and 25 issues, gave the Marvel books a markedly different style from other comic books of the golden era. The artistic style of C.C. Beck had more of a fun and fantastic look, and less of a macho muscled realistic style than many of its competitors.

Eager readers of the new medium of comic books snapped up costumed superhero stories without thought of copyright protection. National Periodicals thought long and hard about other publishers' attempts to emulate their success and Captain Marvel, in particular, seemed to infringe on its rights. That sense of injury may have been exacerbated by the extrodinary success that Captain Marvel had.

The Marvel family, spawned a whole pantheon of Marvel Characters

Captain Marvel
DC claimed that Captain Marvel was a copyright infringement on their character Superman. This case would finally come to trial in 1948; the courts decided in Fawcett's favor. The court stated that some of Superman's appearances were not published with the proper copyright material. However, the court did say that there were some similarities between the two characters. DC Comics appealed this decision and got a new trial in 1951. This court decided that because DC had no intention of abandoning the Superman character, their copyright was still intact, despite their earlier errors in publishing the proper copyright notices. In 1953, the case was finally settled out of court when Fawcett agreed to quit using the Captain Marvel character(s) and pay DC the sum of $400,000

The Hollywood Ten, a group of writers, producers and directors called as witnesses in the House Committee's Investigation of Un-American Activities, are jailed for contempt of Congress when they refuse to disclose if they were or were not Communists.