Oh, woe!
Oh, despair!
Can it be true?
Is Billy Batson dead?
Read on...and have faith!
Lucky for you, we have the code...
...on the back of the Captain Marvel Club Membership Card (shown here)!
Writer Otto Binder and artists CC Beck & Pete Costanza are certainly getting into the spirit of 1940s movie serials, as the cover for this issue...
...demonstrates!
Note: Since the cover portrays the cliffhanger at the end of the chapter, we didn't run it at the head of the post!
But it will be at the head of tommorow's post when...
...on the back of the Captain Marvel Club Membership Card (shown here)!
With the success of Republic'sAdventures of Captain Marvel serial, Otto Binder took the idea of a Captain Marvel B-feature film (nobody in the 1940s would've dreamed of doing a Wizard of Oz-level flick based on a comic book), and ran wild with it, as you'll see when...
...ah, there's nothing like British reserve!
Stiff upper lip and all that rot, eh?
Lucky for you, we have the code...
...on the back of the Captain Marvel Club Membership Card (shown here)!
Writer Otto Binder tossed off interesting concepts like the "Sub-Americans" and Jeepers' near-extinct species as mere filler while advancing the main plot!
Today's writers would do entire issues about them, believing themselves extremely clever for having xome up with them!
1) A new "eight panel to a page" layout (making this read more like movie storyboards than a standard comic page where panel size varies)!
This new format will be continued until the end of the serial.
2) Lack of a cliffhanger from the previous chapter (as if the previous chapter were the final one for that serial, and this was the first chapter in a sequel serial)!
Note that while DC's Superman and Batman both had two serials, their Fawcett equivalents Captain Marvel and Spy Smasher had only one serial each!
3) And, on the first page, panels presenting the synopsis and cast, much in the style of the opening credits of the 1940s Republic serials...including Adventures of Captain Marvel!
Remember how I told you the Captain Marvel Code-Finder was a mail-in premium that would enable you to understand the cryptic messages (like this one) in stories?
And that, without it, you'd be as helpless as an Axis spy to figure out what the message was!
And that I didn't have one of the HTF and expensive Code Finders?
Well, guess what?
We don't need it!
On the back of the Captain Marvel Club Membership Card (shown here) is the code!
...isn't it amazing the ways villains use to keep Billy Batson from saying "SHAZAM!"?
This is now becoming a little irritating!
The Captain Marvel Code-Finder was a mail-in premium that would enable you to understand the cryptic messages (like this one) in stories!
Without it, you'd be as helpless as an Axis spy to figure out what the message was!
Regrettably, I don't have one so I can't tell you what the message says!
Now, a line here or there isn't too bad, but when the whole last panel is in code, that's a pisser! Note: this is one of the few chapters that doesn't end in a life-or-death cliffhanger!
