Captain Marvel Jr.

Welcome to Cast Party, the feature that imagines a world with even more live action comic book adaptations than we currently have, and comes up with arguably the best casting suggestions you’re ever going to find for the movies and shows we wish could exist. This week, I'm going with one of the classics: The Marvel Family, aka Shazam. In theory this is a movie that's actually going to be made, but I have no idea what that will look like, so I'm imagining my own.

When readers imagine the art style of Fawcett Comics' hugely successful line of Marvel Family titles --- Captain Marvel, Mary Marvel, and so on --- there is a good chance the image in their head is rendered by the line's flagship artist, CC Beck, whose friendly, clean-line style defines the look of the Marvels even today. But when Fawcett launched their first spin-off feature to Captain Marvel, the appropriately named Captain Marvel Jr in the pages of Master Comics, the company went with an artist with an almost diametrically opposite --- but equally virtuosic --- style: Mac Raboy.

In today's Justice League #7, the series' regular writer Geoff Johns will be joined by artist and occasional collaborator Gary Frank for a new back-up feature entitled "The Curse of Shazam," which will introduce readers to the "New 52" version of the character formerly known as Captain Marvel, but henceforth known as Shazam...