Why was Captain Marvel—a little boy named Billy Batson whose magic word transforms him into the World’s Mightiest Mortal—one of the most popular comic book characters in the United States in the 1940s? To answer this question, this book takes the reader on a journey through the lives of the writers, artists, and readers who devoted themselves to this hero and his adventures. It’s the story of artist C. C. Beck and writer Otto Binder, one of the most innovative and prolific creative teams of the Golden Age of comics in the U. S.; of the comic book fanzines of the 1960s, which celebrated Billy a ... More

Why was Captain Marvel—a little boy named Billy Batson whose magic word transforms him into the World’s Mightiest Mortal—one of the most popular comic book characters in the United States in the 1940s? To answer this question, this book takes the reader on a journey through the lives of the writers, artists, and readers who devoted themselves to this hero and his adventures. It’s the story of artist C. C. Beck and writer Otto Binder, one of the most innovative and prolific creative teams of the Golden Age of comics in the U. S.; of the comic book fanzines of the 1960s, which celebrated Billy and the rest of the Marvel Family; and of an art form steeped in nostalgia, a term with a long, complex, and often misunderstood history. Taking its cue from C. C. Beck’s theories of comic art, this book is a study of why we read comics, and, more significantly, how we remember these heroes and the America that dreamed them in the first place.