Whiz Comics #2

A Superman, only a boy

Fawcett Publications was a magazine house, not a comics publisher, when Superman and Batman turned the comic book into a business. In 1939 it started a comics division and put staff writer Bill Parker to work on heroes for its first title. Parker wrote Ibis the Invincible, Spy Smasher, Golden Arrow, Lance O'Casey, Scoop Smith and Dan Dare, and he also wrote a story about a team of six heroes, each powered by a mythological figure.

Executive director Ralph Daigh decided one hero with all six powers would be better than six heroes with one each. Parker called the result Captain Thunder. Circulation director Roscoe Kent Fawcett later recalled telling the staff, 'Give me a Superman, only have his other identity be a 10- or 12-year-old boy rather than a man.'

The first version was printed in a small run in the fall of 1939 as black-and-white ashcan editions, made to secure the material and to show advertisers. The same book carried two titles, Flash Comics #1 and Thrill Comics #1. Fawcett then found that Captain Thunder, Flash Comics and Thrill Comics were all names already in use. The magazine became Whiz Comics, after the company's old humor magazine Captain Billy's Whiz Bang. Artist Pete Costanza suggested 'Captain Marvelous,' the editors shortened it to Captain Marvel, and the word balloons were relettered.

Because the ashcans counted as #1, the first Whiz Comics anyone could buy was numbered #2, cover-dated February 1940. No copyright registration is on record for it, but the issue that followed was reported to the Copyright Office as published January 12, 1940, so #2 most likely reached newsstands in December 1939. Fawcett then printed two different issues as #3, which is why collectors and the CGC label call this book #2 (#1).

Shazam on page one

The lead story runs 13 pages, written by Parker and drawn by Beck. It introduces Billy Batson, an orphaned 12-year-old newsboy who sleeps in a subway station. A stranger leads him to the ancient wizard Shazam, and when Billy speaks the wizard's name, a magic lightning bolt turns him into the adult Captain Marvel. The name is an acronym for the six elders who grant his powers: Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles and Mercury.

In the same story Captain Marvel meets Doctor Sivana, the mad scientist who becomes his archenemy, and Billy talks his way into a job as an on-air reporter at radio station WHIZ. Beck's cover shows the hero hurling a car against a wall, an echo of the car-lifting Superman on the cover of Action Comics #1.

The rest of the 68 pages is a full launch lineup: Ibis the Invincible, an Egyptian prince who rises from the dead in an American museum; the origin of Golden Arrow; the first Spy Smasher story, also drawn by Beck; Scoop Smith; Lance O'Casey and his chimp, Mr. Hogan; and Dan Dare. An inside-cover page lists the seven new features, and a contest page offered $25 in cash prizes for the best letter naming a reader's favorite character, with entries due January 15, 1940.

The indicia gives the publisher's address as 1100 West Broadway, Louisville, Kentucky. That was actually the address of the printer, C. T. Dearing Printing. Fawcett's general offices were in the Fawcett Building in Greenwich, Connecticut.

Parker, Beck and a movie star's face

Charles Clarence Beck was born June 8, 1910, in Zumbrota, Minnesota, the son of a Lutheran minister and a schoolteacher. He studied at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts and the University of Minnesota and joined Fawcett as a staff artist in 1933, working on its pulp magazines. When the company moved into comics in the autumn of 1939, he was assigned Parker's Captain Thunder.

Beck later explained what the two of them were after: 'When Bill Parker and I went to work on Fawcett's first comic book in late 1939, we both saw how poorly written and illustrated the superhero comic books were. We decided to give our reader a real comic book, drawn in comic-strip style and telling an imaginative story, based not on the hackneyed formulas of the pulp magazine, but going back to the old folk-tales and myths of classic times.'

Captain Marvel's look was modeled on the actor Fred MacMurray, though comparisons were also made to Cary Grant and Jack Oakie. Company founder Wilford H. Fawcett was nicknamed 'Captain Billy,' which inspired both the name Billy Batson and the hero's rank.

Parker was drafted into World War II, and by 1942 Otto Binder had taken over most of the writing. Beck stayed on as lead artist, opened his own studio in 1941 that supplied most of the Marvel Family art, and later said that in 13 years of drawing Captain Marvel he wrote only one story. He drew the first 10 issues of DC's Shazam! revival in the 1970s and died November 22, 1989.

Outselling Superman, and paying for it

Whiz Comics #2 was an immediate hit, reported to have sold more than 500,000 copies. By 1941 Captain Marvel had his own title, Captain Marvel Adventures, and that year Republic Pictures made him the first comic book superhero adapted to film, in the serial Adventures of Captain Marvel. Captain Marvel Adventures sold 14 million copies in 1944 and at one point came out every two weeks with a circulation of 1.3 million an issue.

In 1941 the company that became DC Comics sued Fawcett and Republic, claiming Captain Marvel copied Superman. The case reached trial in 1948. The first verdict, in 1951, went to Fawcett, because the court found National had been careless with copyrights on some Superman newspaper strips. In 1952 Judge Learned Hand held that National's Superman copyright was valid and sent the case back for a retrial on specific stories.

Fawcett never retried it. Captain Marvel Adventures had lost sales every year after 1945, and on August 14, 1953, Fawcett agreed to stop publishing Captain Marvel and his family permanently and to pay National $400,000. Whiz Comics had already ended with #155 in June 1953, and Fawcett shut its comics division that autumn.

On June 16, 1972, DC licensed the characters from Fawcett. Marvel Comics by then held the Captain Marvel trademark for its own hero, so DC titled the revival Shazam!, starting with Shazam! #1, cover-dated February 1973. The hero has been widely known as Shazam ever since, and a film of that name was released in April 2019.

From a $17,600 no-sale to six figures

Whiz Comics #2 was long considered a slow seller among high-end collectors, some of whom ranked Captain Marvel well behind Superman and Batman. That changed on the night of December 3, 2011, when a CGC 6.0 copy sold at auction for $176,007 after 90 bids. The same copy had failed to meet its reserve that August with a top bid of $17,600. Many collectors put the result down partly to a bidding war between two determined buyers.

On December 7, 2012, the copy graded CGC 9.0, the highest CGC-graded copy, sold at auction for $281,001. The auction's organizers said it came from a collection of books unearthed from the Library of Congress. At the time only four unrestored copies on the census were graded 6.0 or better. A high-grade copy from the Edgar Church collection, never graded, was reported to have sold for $176,000 around 1995.

A CGC 6.0 sold at auction for $173,275 in May 2018, and a CGC 5.0 restored copy brought $26,290 in the same sale. A 2024 auction description cited a recorded public sale of a CGC 6.0 for $385,378 in December 2021, without saying how that sale was made. On June 20, 2024, a CGC 7.0 with off-white to white pages, which its cataloger called the highest-graded unrestored copy they had handled, sold at auction for $288,000 including buyer's premium. That is above the 2012 price for the 9.0, so the 9.0's sale is no longer the highest verified result for the issue.

How many survive

No print run figure is documented. The surviving count is small for a book that reportedly sold half a million copies. In February 2019 CGC had graded 50 copies: 23 with Universal (unrestored) labels and 27 restored. The median grade was 5.0 overall but only 2.5 for the unrestored copies. The highest Universal grade was 9.0 and the highest restored grade was 9.2.

By May 2024 the census listed 61 copies, 32 of them unrestored, with two copies at 7.0 and two graded higher. The CGC label carries the '#2 (#1)' designation, because this was the first issue actually sold despite the No. 2 inside.

A genuine copy carries a 10-cent price, the 'A Fawcett Publication' triangle emblem, which made its first appearance on this issue, and Beck's cover of Captain Marvel smashing a car into a wall. The story has been reprinted many times, so the cover price, emblem and indicia are the first things to check.

The numbers

Cover price

10 cents

Pages

68

Print run

No verified figure; reported sales of more than 500,000 copies

Census, December 2012

Only 4 unrestored copies at 6.0 or better

Census, February 2019

50 copies: 23 Universal, 27 Restored; highest Universal 9.0, highest Restored 9.2

Median grade, February 2019

5.0 overall; 2.5 for Universal copies

Census, May 2024

61 copies, 32 unrestored; 2 at 7.0, 2 higher

Timeline

1. 1933

   C. C. Beck joins Fawcett Publications as a staff artist.

2. 1939

   Fawcett starts a comics division; Bill Parker creates Captain Thunder and Beck draws him.

3. 1939

   Black-and-white ashcan editions titled Flash Comics #1 and Thrill Comics #1 are printed in a small run.

4. Dec 1939

   Whiz Comics #2 most likely goes on sale, cover-dated February 1940.

5. Jan 12, 1940

   Publication date reported for Whiz Comics #3, the first of two issues numbered #3.

6. 1941

   Captain Marvel Adventures begins, and the Republic serial makes Captain Marvel the first comic book superhero on film.

7. 1941

   DC's predecessor sues Fawcett and Republic Pictures for copyright infringement.

8. 1944

   Captain Marvel Adventures sells 14 million copies in the year.

9. 1951

   The first verdict goes to Fawcett; it is overturned on appeal in 1952.

10. Jun 1953

    Whiz Comics ends with #155.

11. Aug 14, 1953

    Fawcett settles, agreeing to stop publishing Captain Marvel and to pay $400,000.

12. Jun 16, 1972

    DC licenses Captain Marvel and the Marvel Family from Fawcett.

13. Feb 1973

    Shazam! #1 returns the character to print under a new title.

14. Dec 3, 2011

    A CGC 6.0 copy sells at auction for $176,007, four months after failing to meet reserve at $17,600.

15. Dec 7, 2012

    The CGC 9.0 copy, from a group of books out of the Library of Congress, sells for $281,001.

16. May 2018

    A CGC 6.0 sells at auction for $173,275.

17. Apr 2019

    The film Shazam! is released.

18. Jun 20, 2024

    A CGC 7.0 sells at auction for $288,000.

The world in 1939

• Dec 2, 1939

  LaGuardia Airport opens for business in New York City.

• Dec 15, 1939

  Gone with the Wind premieres in Atlanta.

• Dec 22, 1939

  Fleischer Studios releases Gulliver's Travels, the first animated feature from an American studio other than Disney.

• Dec 29, 1939

  The prototype B-24 Liberator bomber makes its first flight.

• Feb 7, 1940

  Walt Disney's Pinocchio is released.

• Feb 10, 1940

  Tom and Jerry debut in the cartoon Puss Gets the Boot.

• Feb 29, 1940

  Gone with the Wind wins eight Academy Awards.

• Apr 1940

  Robin first appears as Batman's partner in Detective Comics #38.

Price record

A realized auction price is what a buyer actually paid on the date shown, including the buyer's premium where the sale reported it. It is the strongest kind of reference price, and it is a record of one sale of one object on one day, not a promise of what the next example will bring.

By reference price, Whiz Comics #2 is number 19 of 100 in the comics entries of the FLOAT 100. 92 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (15 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• In the ashcan editions printed before Whiz Comics #2, the hero was called Captain Thunder; his word balloons were relettered for the newsstand issue.
• SHAZAM stands for Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles and Mercury.
• The hero's face was modeled on the actor Fred MacMurray.
• Fawcett published two different issues both numbered Whiz Comics #3.
• The address in the indicia, in Louisville, Kentucky, belonged to the printer, not to Fawcett.
• A copy that drew a top bid of only $17,600 in August 2011 sold for $176,007 four months later.
• C. C. Beck said that in 13 years of drawing Captain Marvel he wrote only one story.
• Because Marvel Comics held the Captain Marvel trademark by 1972, DC's revival was titled Shazam!