What can I say? Turns out I have a soft spot for the superhero classics that go back to the 40s and 50s. I bought this weird and obscure little thing from Amazon mainly because of Mary Marvel, and I wanted to know more about her.
'Shazam Family Giant: Make Mine Mary Marvel' collects Mary Bromfield/Batson's origin issue, and both her individual and her Shazam/Marvel family team-up (consisting of Billy Batson/Captain Marvel and Freddy Freeman/Captain Marvel Jr.) issues. These are more funnies and magazine companions to go with other products than anything else. This is from a time before DC even owned these characters.The stories are such silly but fun little visual ditties, as is to be expected from that period of time. Every kind of wackiness, goofiness, "just roll with it"-ness, and murdering of science is present. "Holy Moley!" is said a lot, too.
I like the ones where: Mary Marvel uncovers a witch hunt and conspiracy in a superstitious part of a town; the Marvel family literally save galaxies from a million year war with each other; Mary saves her kidnapped friend Freckles Dudley, who isn't so helpless after all (Freckles is a recurring female friend character); Mary in a sweet, sleighing Christmas special; Mary stops a robot-inventing supervillainess from stealing a diadem and becoming the princess of earth; the family trio travels to the past, present and future to save geniuses; and Mary stops an unseasonal blizzard and a mad scientist, when she'd been out at a tropical beach with her (adoptive, presumably) mother.
It's impressive how much of a strong, capable and competent superheroine Mary Marvel is, whether independently or in her team of brothers. She is the lightning bolt girl, with super strength, speed, flight and invulnerability, from the goddesses Selena, Hippolyta, Ariadne, Zephyrus, Aurora and Minerva (oh, I get it now). Always proving sexist assumptions wrong, she is called the mightiest girl in the world, possibly the universe. And this is from the 40s-50s.
Unfortunately, for every step forward in positive gender representation, there still remains the racist depictions. In the million year galactic war story, the aliens from one of the galaxies that the family sees strongly resemble Chinese male stereotypes, and in some issues I'm sure there are villains who are antisemitic caricatures as well.
Mary Marvel is getting her own solo comic book, 'The New Champion of Shazam!', and I'll definitely be reading it when it comes out as a full volume in 2023. I'm always on the lookout and staying tuned to stories about superhero girls and women!
Final Score: 3.5/5
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