Monday, October 19, 2015

Captain Marvel Comics

Captain Marvel appeared in several comics in the '40s and '50s but I'd like to briefly look at the two main ones.  The primary periodicals for Cap were Whiz Comics and Captain Marvel Adventures.




Captain Marvel made his premier in Whiz Comics #2 in February of 1940.  He starred in Whiz Comics up until the final issue published in June of 1953.



Captain Marvel Adventures premiered in March of 1941 and issued it's final comic in November 1953.

There was a fundamental difference between Whiz Comics and Captain Marvel Adventures.  In Whiz Comics, there was typically just one Captain Marvel story followed by stories featuring other heroes such as The Golden Arrow and Ibis the Invincible.  In Captain Marvel Adventures, there were typically four stories all featuring Captain Marvel.  Now if I was a kid in the '40s and '50s I'd probably put my money down on Captain Marvel Adventures and get more stories for my money!

If you've never read any of these comics, don't despair!  I've found two sites where you can read both Whiz Comics and Captain Marvel Adventures - free!  The two sites are Comic Book Plus and The Digital Comic Museum.  

Whiz Comics and Captain Marvel Adventures provide us with over 300 stories and adventures of Captain Marvel.  Holy Moley that's a lot of adventures!!  My plan is to feature an issue of either Whiz Comics or Captain Marvel Adventures each week giving an overview of the issue.  In the mean time I hope you check out a few issues for yourself!!





2 comments:

  1. Hey my friend, this is Carl from Twitter (@LetsTalkShazam), and I wanted to point out that the actual dates concerned are:

    Captain Marvel Adventures #1: January 17th, 1941

    and...

    Captain Marvel Adventures #150: August 10th, 1953

    In those days, it was common for an issue to be out before their cover date.

    If you ever need to, you can use this to check the accuracy of when a comic's actual release date was: http://www.mikesamazingworld.com/features/search.php?searchtype=series&searchtxt=

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    1. Thanks Carl, I appreciate it! I was looking at 2 different sources to try and determine the dates and they didn't agree so I think I just went with the dates on the cover. Thanks for the link, I'm going to check it out.

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