Captain Marvel is back! The truth about the name Shazam and the twist in Justice League #18
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Captain Marvel is back! No bombastic marketing announcements. In the pages of Justice League Unlimited #18, published this April 2026, Mark Waid did what many editors have avoided for 15 years: he called the hero Captain Marvel. That's right! A silly mention in the simplest possible scene.
And if you're new to the channel or if you started following the character through the movies, you might be wondering: 'But isn't his name Shazam?'. Well, the short answer is: it never was. And the long answer involves a trademark war, a DC corporate identity crisis, and a video I recorded here on the channel in 2023 where I had just announced that Mark Waid had said that Captain Marvel would return. At the time, he didn't mention "Marvel," but that has just changed. DC finally gave up on calling the hero Shazam. Finally!
This is a video discussing the return of the name Captain Marvel. The idea is not only to celebrate the more than fair return of the name, but to do a critical and academic review of the enormous mess that DC made with Captain Marvel over the last 15 years.
DC was never legally prohibited from using the name Captain Marvel within the stories. The conflict with Marvel Comics is about trademark, not copyright. That is: Shazam on the cover, Captain Marvel in the pages. And this worked that way from 1972 to 2011. So why change?
In 2011, Geoff Johns argued that calling the hero Shazam would end the public's "confusion." In his mind and, supposedly, in the minds of other DC Comics executives or related companies at the time, the public didn't understand why the comic was called Shazam and the hero was called Captain Marvel. And this confusion was further tied to another issue: the existence of a Captain Marvel in Marvel Comics. According to him, calling the hero Shazam would solve the problem because the public would see coherence between the name of the magazine and the hero of its stories. However, this was just a facade.
First of all, because, let's be honest: the comic book audience is mature enough to understand the distinction between the name of the magazine and the name of the hero. Secondly, what actually happened was a decision of 'intellectual property farming'. They wanted to standardize the character in their catalog of heroes to simplify the commercialization of the character's licensing for other products.
But this created several problems!
The first was provoking the hatred of their fan community, either because they considered them ignorant or intellectually limited in such a way as to be unable to distinguish between the name of the magazine and the name of the character. The second problem that DC created was a narrative hole that was evident in the films themselves. And we clearly noticed this in the character from the following aspects: first, assigning the magic word as a personal name generated a social identity crisis in the character. Second, as a consequence, the construction of the hero's personality due to the triggering of a social identity crisis made him, on the one hand, become silly as an adult - which is totally a reflection of the misunderstanding of the whimsical characteristic of the character and his universe (I will explain this in another video) and, on the other hand, made Billy Batson become a cynical, idiotic and very annoying teenager, totally inconsistent with the core of his stories, which is an optimistic and serene character in the face of problems and, third, also as a consequence of this - because it is indeed a chain reaction - annihilated the wisdom of Solomon. And, lastly, transformed the Marvel Family, with all its particularities, into the Power Rangers of DC.
In the video, I tell you why changing Captain Marvel's name to Shazam was the worst thing DC has ever done to the character. And I will give an explanation based on anthropological studies about magic, because as we know, stories, fiction or not, are always anchored in reality and function according to rules.
EQUIPMENT USED
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Camera: Samsung A52 front camera
Audio: Hollyland Lark M2 Duo microphone
Stabilization: Kingjoy VT-1500 tripod
Recording app: Open Camera
Editing: ShotCut
Soundtrack: YouTube Audio Library