A stunning Golden Age Archive featuring the adventures of Captain Marvel,Jr. and the origin of Mary Marvel from MASTER COMICS 23-32, CAPTAIN MARVEL JR.#1 and CAPTAIN MARVEL ADVENTURES #18!

Superman may be faster than a speeding bullet, but even he can't outrun copyright law. Since the dawn of the pulp hero in the 1930s, publishers and authors have fought over the privilege of making money off of comics, and the authors and artists usually have lost. Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the creators of Superman, got all of $130 for the rights to the hero. In Empire of the Superheroes, Mark Cotta Vaz argues that licensing and litigation do as much as any ink-stained creator to shape the mythology of comic characters. Vaz reveals just how precarious life was for the legends of the industry. Siegel and Shuster—and their heirs—spent seventy years battling lawyers to regain rights to Superman. Jack Kirby and Joe Simon were cheated out of their interest in Captain America, and Kirby's children brought a case against Marvel to the doorstep of the Supreme Court. To make matters worse, the infant comics medium was nearly strangled in its crib by censorship and moral condemnation. For the writers and illustrators now celebrated as visionaries, the "golden age" of comics felt more like hard times. The fantastical characters that now earn Hollywood billions have all-too-human roots. Empire of the Superheroes digs them up, detailing the creative martyrdom at the heart of a pop-culture powerhouse.

Alphabetical listings provide release dates, scales, articulations, accessories, first appearance notes, and photographs of more than 1,400 DC Comics action figures.

Shazam Family Giant wants you to "Make Mine Mary Marvel"! Billy Batson's twin sister Mary is revealed to be the Shazam Girl, Mary Marvel! With the powers of six goddesses, Mary joins Captain Marvel and Captain Marvel Jr. as the World's Mightiest Girl! She battles Mr. Power, wicked witches, crafty cavemen, runaway holidays, time travellers, attacking aliens, cunning crooks, and the sinister Sivanas! 100 Big Pages!

The 1970s adventures of ShazamÑnow the star of his very own movieÑare collected in color for the first time! These new adventures combined the cartoony art of C.C. Beck, the original artist from the best-selling comics of the 1940s, with the modern, tongue-in-cheek sensibility of writers including Dennis OÕNeil as the entire Marvel family reunite for all-new adventures. Collects SHAZAM! #1-18.

It's a lucky time to be a horror fan! Celebrate the tremendously terrifying thirteenth volume in the Creepy Archives hardcover series with classic tales by Bernie Wrightson, Bruce Jones, John Severin, and more, as the esteemed horror magazine hits another fruitful period of frightful delights in the mid-seventies! Collecting the classic Creepy magazines #60 through #63, plus several color pieces by Richard Corben, Sanjulian, and Ken Kelly--with black-and-white stories throughout by Tom Sutton, Jose Bea, Bill DuBay, Jose Gual, and many others.

Dark Horse''s award-winning Creepy Archives hardcover series roars through the 1970s with a batch of classic horror tales! Dark Horse''s latest foray into fear reprints some of Warren Publishing''s first full-color story offerings from the early seventies and features more of the unique talents that made Creepy so tantalizing and timeless. With gorgeous covers by Sanjulian and work by comic-book talents Richard Corben, Doug Moench, Budd Lewis, Tom Sutton, and Reed Crandall, this volume is not to be missed! This archival collection includes issues #51 through #54 of the original Creepy magazines, as well as color covers and stories, fan pages, "Dear Uncle Creepy" letters columns, and an exclusive foreword by filmaker John Landis!

Billy Batson discovers a secret in a forgotten subway tunnel. There the young man meets a wizard who offers a precious gift: a magic word that will transform the newsboy into a hero. When Billy says, "Shazam!," he becomes Captain Marvel, the World's Mightiest Mortal, one of the most popular comic book characters of the 1940s. This book tells the story of that hero and the writers and artists who created his magical adventures. The saga of Captain Marvel is also that of artist C. C. Beck and writer Otto Binder, one of the most innovative and prolific creative teams working during the Golden Age of comics in the United States. While Beck was the technician and meticulous craftsman, Binder contributed the still, human voice at the heart of Billy's adventures. Later in his career, Beck, like his friend and colleague Will Eisner, developed a theory of comic art expressed in numerous articles, essays, and interviews. A decade after Fawcett Publications settled a copyright infringement lawsuit with Superman's publisher, Beck and Binder became legendary, celebrated figures in comic book fandom of the 1960s. What Beck, Binder, and their readers share in common is a fascination with nostalgia, which has shaped the history of comics and comics scholarship in the United States. Billy Batson's America, with its cartoon villains and talking tigers, remains a living archive of childhood memories, so precious but elusive, as strange and mysterious as the boy's first visit to the subway tunnel. Taking cues from Beck's theories of art and from the growing field of memory studies, Captain Marvel and the Art of Nostalgia explains why we read comics and, more significantly, how we remember them and the America that dreamed them up in the first place.

As properties of DC comics continue to sprout over the years, narratives that were once kept sacrosanct now spill over into one another, synergizing into one bona fide creative Universe. Intended for both professional pop culture researchers and general interest readers, this collection of essays covers DC Universe multimedia, including graphic novels, video games, movies and TV shows. Each essay is written by a recognized pop culture expert offering a distinct perspective on a wide variety of topics. Even though many of the entries address important social themes like gender and racism, the book is not limited to these topics. Also included are more lighthearted essays for full verisimilitude, including analyses of long forgotten or seemingly marginal aspects of the DC Extended Universe, as well as in-depth and original interpretations of the most beloved characters and their relationships to one another. Highly accessible and approachable, this work provides previously unavailable in-roads that create a richer comprehension of the ever-expanding DC Universe.