Please Share and Follow us on Twitter!
Tweet
Follow @toylabHQ
The Battle of the Danvers - Supergirl Vs Captain Marvel
Marvel is working on the Captain Marvel movie to be released on July 6th 2018, Rather than using the original Mar Vell male version of the character they will go directly into the female version, Carol Danvers. Curiously, DC is also making a Shazam film whose history also ties into this question.Captain Marvel Store:
Check out these cool Captain Marvel products direct from Amazon to get ready for the film!
DC is out there building up their brands as well. While DC seems behind in building a unified film universe there TV universe seems much more complete than Marvel's. DC has Arrow, Flash, Constantine, and also....Super Girl.
The name of Super Girl's alter ego is Kara Zor-El aka Linda Danvers.
Wait a second....Danvers? So we have Captain Marvel at Marvel with the last name of Danvers. We have Supergirl with the last name of Danvers at DC. What the heck? How did two of the biggest super females end up with the same last name?
This funny situation was brought to my attention by astute reader Lacey Kornicki who wondered if the companies were playing games with the TV series and Movies. The truth is that I was fuzzy on my Supergirl history and had to read up on it. What I found was that this silly situation goes all the way back to the 1960s, well really if you want to be entirely accurate it goes all the way back to the 1940s. Yes, these comic companies have been poking at each other for a long, long time.
Captain Marvel in the 1940s
The original Captain Marvel was not a Marvel character. Actually, the Captain Marvel character predates Marvel's big entrance into the super hero genre Fantastic 4 #1 by 22 years. Captain Marvel was created by a comic company called Fawcet in 1939. Fantastic Four #1 did not come out until 1961.
This original Captain Marvel character is now known by the name Shazam. In his heyday through the 1940s he was the most popular Super hero character, even more popular than Superman. He was so popular that the Publisher Fawcet created a whole super Marvel family to go along with him. Then in 1953 in part due to a lawsuit from DC Fawcet stopped printing Captain Marvel. The DC lawsuit alleged that Captain Marvel was a copy of Superman.
Without Fawcet publishing Captain Marvel there was no one to publish any books with the name Captain Marvel for almost 14 years.
1960s The Emergence of Marvel and a new Captain Marvel
Something interesting happens around 1961 and that is the small publisher of western, horror, and romance comics Marvel beginning to print Super Hero comics. A previously unknown man by the name of Stan Lee begins to reinvent the super hero genre and build Marvel into a powerhouse. Suddenly, DC has a new competitor that is beating them in sales and for the first time they find themselves unable to buy up a competitor or legally thwart them.
As Marvel builds itself into a super hero juggernaut, the writers there realize that no one is using the Captain Marvel name. Not wanting anyone to use characters that have the same name as the publisher Marvel acquires the license and in 1967 prints the first Captain Marvel book. Marvel must periodically print beneath the name of Captain Marvel to keep the license active, something they have been very devout about doing since 1967.
Who is Marvel's Captain Marvel? His name is Mar Vell he is an alien, with super strength and can fly. In essence he is very similar to DC's Superman, and the original Fawcett Captain Marvel character. He is not very original at first but he allows Marvel to keep the name. Overtime Captain Marvel would be developed by writers into a much more cosmic facing character with his own struggles and personality that set him farther apart from Superman and Shazam.
Supergirl 1959
 |
| Supergirl by Green Stranger |
Supergirl is pretty much an exact clone of her cousin Superman, but female. She has been criticized for this and even killed off by DC at one point because they thought all she did was take away from the uniqueness of Superman's mythos. In her absence though, DC ended up creating new Supergirls like Linda Danvers. Supergirl continued to be popular whether or not the idea was original or not. Eventually, they decided to simply bring back Kara.
1968 -1977 the Creation of Carol Danvers and Ms Marvel
 |
| Captain Marvel by Arkenstar |
Ms Marvel is created in part to simply control another name with word Marvel in it. The idea was also to have a character be a symbol for the modern woman's quest for identity.
At the time of her origin female comic fans debated whether she was a strong female character or not. The main problem being that her hero form was a copy of Captain Marvel, and her secret identity Carol Danvers was a copy of Supergirl. In some sense Carol is a copy of a copy of a copy.
Why would Marvel use the name Danvers? I don't know. It could have been lazy. It could have been meant to show that this is Marvel's Supergirl. It might have been meant to poke fun at their competitor. What is known is that they did it.
While Ms Marvel's origin is not the most original, she has become a major symbol of female power in the way Wonder Woman has for DC. Her status was cemented when she took on mantle of Captain Marvel in July 2012 in Captain Marvel #1.
Related:
Who is Carol Danvers / Captain Marvel?
Carol Danvers Greg Horn covers!
Ms Marvel Pictures and COSPLAY
DISCLAIMER: This article was submitted by a volunteer contributor who has agreed to our code of conduct. Toylab is protected from liability under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) and "safe harbor" provisions. Toylab will disable users who knowingly commit plagiarism, piracy, trademark or copyright infringement. Please contact us at ToylabHQ@gmail for expeditious removal of copyrighted/trademarked content. You may also learn more about our copyright and trademark policies
Posts
I'm sorry, but this article is full of glaring mistakes. To start with, "Kara Danvers" was a name created by the tv-show. Supergirl's first Earth name was "Linda Lee". Two years later (1961) she was adopted by Fred and Edna Danvers and changed her name to Linda Lee Danvers.
ReplyDeletePost-Crisis Linda Danvers was named after her. Other names used by Supergirl include Kara Kent, Claire Connor and Linda Lang. "Kara Danvers" was created for the tv-show.
And Supergirl wasn't "an exact clone of her cousin Superman, but female". Back when she was created, Superman was the perfect hero. He never failed or made mistakes. Supergirl wasn't Superman, so she was narratively allowed to make mistakes and screw-ups what she had to learn from. She was also younger so she was more short-tempered, more reckless and snarkier (In Supergirl Vol. 2 12 She asks a pushy police if he wanted a hint as to what he could do with his badge. I can't imagine her Silver Age cousin doing that). And unlike her cousin, she was raised among Kryptonians, so she was a bigger fish in water than him.
Honestly, DC worked hard for making Supergirl different than Superman prior to the Crisis. Superman lost his biological parents, was adopted by the Kents after spending a very brief stay in an orphanage, and then he lost his adoptive parents, too. Supergirl spent one year in the Midvale Orphanage before being adopted, she never lost her adoptive parents and later found out her birth parents were still alive. Superman was always a reporter and he never changed jobs or moved because his status quo was unmovable. Supergirl changed jobs and cities constantly, becoming a photographer, student advisor, actress, psychology student... but she was never a reporter. Superman never got older. Supergirl grew up. Superman had a Kryptonian dog. Supergirl got herself a super-powered, non-Kryptonian cat. Superman always knew what he wanted to be a hero. Supergirl often expressed she would like living like a normal woman (just check Superman Family 165). And so on.