The Captain That Split the Scene

Captain Marvel Split! by Mark LewisIt won’t come as any sur­prise to long­time vis­i­tors of my site to hear this, but most of my friends know that when you say the words “Cap­tain Mar­vel” to me, my default set­ting is to think of the orig­i­nal Faw­cett char­ac­ter. How­ev­er, this ain’t him!

This Cap­tain Mar­vel is an android. His com­ic debuted in 1966, pub­lished by M.F. Enter­pris­es, 13 years after Faw­cett pub­lished their last adven­ture of the orig­i­nal Cap­tain Marvel.

So what does this Cap­tain Mar­vel do? He seems to have a lot of the usu­al super­hero pow­ers: strength, flight, etc. But his real call­ing card is that when he says his mag­ic word (“Split!”), he can detach parts of his body at will and have them fly around and do his bid­ding. A unique pow­er, to be sure, but more than a lit­tle odd. To rejoin, he speaks his oth­er mag­ic word, “Xam!”

In look­ing for a fresh take on this Cap­tain, I thought it was such an odd­ball con­cept that it might have been bet­ter-suit­ed to Sat­ur­day Morn­ing car­toons. So I start­ed to re-imag­ine it as the kind of semi-comedic super­hero adven­ture car­toon that back then would’ve fit in well along­side Han­na-Bar­bera shows like Franken­stein Jr., The Impos­si­bles, or Atom Ant. Since those shows appeared as Gold Key comics, that seemed a good place for my re-imag­ined Cap­tain Mar­vel too.

8 thoughts on “The Captain That Split the Scene

  1. Lyle Dodd

    Does­n’t his mag­ic word make it dif­fi­cult to order at an Ice Cream Parlor?
    “I want a banana split.…oops!”

    Those old Gold Key cov­ers that you do sure bring back memories.….nice job!

    Reply
    1. Mark Post author

      Thanks! Yeah, I had a few of those Gold Key comics when I was younger. I think I actu­al­ly appre­ci­ate the artistry that went into some of those books even more now than I did then.

      Reply
    1. Mark Post author

      I’m glad you like it, Cap­tain. Yeah, it just seemed to me that the odd­i­ty of that ver­sion of the char­ac­ter would lend itself bet­ter to more of a car­toony ver­sion, ala Hanna-Barbera.

      Reply
    1. Mark Post author

      Thanks! I’m glad you enjoyed it. He’s def­i­nite­ly a dif­fer­ent kind of “Mar­vel” from the one I’m more famil­iar with, but I just had a feel­ing there was this oth­er way of look­ing at him that might be worth try­ing out.

      Reply
  2. David Burnell Davis

    I have some of those MF Cap­tain Mar­vel comics in my col­lec­tion, and I love ’em. I’m sure that I would’ve loved a Han­na-Bar­bera Cap­tain Mar­vel ani­mat­ed series, too; one done like Franken­stein Jr. and The Impos­si­bles, which cap­tured my imag­i­na­tion when I was lit­tle. And of course, the req­ui­site Gold Key comic.?

    Reply
    1. Mark Post author

      The MF Cap­tain Mar­vel is one of those things that’s kind of “so bad, it’s good.” It’s hard not to like him, quirky weird­ness and all.

      Reply

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