# How can Captain Marvel be a woman? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 27, 2019, 5:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-captain-marvel-be-a-woman/831594 "2019-03-27T05:59:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2019, 1:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-captain-marvel-be-a-woman/831594/61 "2019-03-28T13:56:46Z")
In the 1930s, the people creating comic books weren’t the kind that cared about whether a god was Greek or Roman and how that would explain the “-verse.” ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2019, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-captain-marvel-be-a-woman/831594/62 "2019-03-28T14:12:30Z")
> [@](#): > > Quoth **Loach** : > > Go argue with 9 year old me. To him it was Shazam Can’t 9-year-old you just say the magic word so we’re arguing with adult-you instead? ---
**Author:** ![Kamino\_Neko](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kamino_neko/32/34_2.png) [@Kamino\_Neko](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kamino_Neko)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2019, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-captain-marvel-be-a-woman/831594/63 "2019-03-28T14:26:25Z")
> [@MrAtoz](#): > > If that’s true, it’s a new innovation. It is not _that_ new, but it _is_ from the DC era, probably after they gained complete rights to him (was definitely the case in the late 90s) and it’s extremely inconsistent. (The Shazam backup in the 2011 Justice League had it, but the current Shazam series suggests they’ll change whether they want to or not…) ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2019, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-captain-marvel-be-a-woman/831594/64 "2019-03-28T16:32:46Z")
There’s a reason that I pretend comic books don’t exist. 😉😕 ---
**Author:** ![TBG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c89c15/32.png) [@TBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TBG)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2019, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-captain-marvel-be-a-woman/831594/65 "2019-03-28T18:24:18Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > Thanks. That’s the story I remember (although I read it in one of the Mad paperbacks, not in the original magazine). > > I especially liked two oxes in the acronym for Shazoom! > > Strength > Health > Aptitude > Zeal > Ox, power of > Ox, power of another > Money > > No one has mentioned the original Captain’s acronym yet: > > Solomon > Hercules > Atlas > Zeus > Achilles > Mercury > > It always seemed weird to me including a Jewish King in the list, not to mention mixing together Greek and Roman deities and heroes. Black Adam had another list of “gods” that still made up the letters SHAZAM, at least he did in the 90’s. I won’t list them out, mainly because I can’t recall them offhand. Still referred to the wizard, though. > [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#): > > Captain Marvel Junior had pretty much that exact problem, and yet managed it. Until they decided to give him the incredibly dumb new alias of CM3. Not Captain Marvel III, or anything like that, just the two letters and a single number. I assume it was 3 because both Billy and Mary were going by Captain Marvel at the time. At least they gave Mary some white duds to make her look a little different. AFAIK, Freddie still had to say “Captain Marvel” to transform, Billy, Mary, (and Adam) of course saying “SHAZAM”. ---
**Author:** ![Dangerosa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2019, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-captain-marvel-be-a-woman/831594/66 "2019-03-28T18:45:15Z")
> [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > I have to admit, though, for a casual fan, keeping the various marvels straight can be a bit of a challenge. Is there an overview somewhere? There’s also the Monica Rambeaux (?) Captain Marvel, who could transform into… Light? Energy? And I think a Ms. Marvel that was a kind of female The Thing? If you are casual don’t bother…as someone said, its like a soap opera. Don’t get started on Batman’s sidekick Robin, for instance. Into the Spiderverse makes fun of the various versions of Spiderman just in Marvel (yes, there is a SpiderHam). And there are plenty of characters in the DC universe that have doppelgangers in the Marvel universe - plus there are a lot of smaller comic houses that have existed over the years…that’s just the industry. Sometime the have the same name, but different powers, sometimes it just look like a rip off between the same idea (some day I’ll bother to keep Dr. Fate and Doctor Strange straight in my head). File the 1970s Saturday morning Shazam!/Captain Marvel under “Electra Woman and DynaGirl” and move on. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2019, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-captain-marvel-be-a-woman/831594/67 "2019-03-28T18:49:36Z")
Mary Marvel had her own god-list, too; Selena, Hippolyta, Ariadne, Zephyrus, Aurora and Minerva. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2019, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-captain-marvel-be-a-woman/831594/68 "2019-03-28T18:56:32Z")
> [@TBG](#): > > Black Adam had another list of “gods” that still made up the letters SHAZAM, at least he did in the 90’s. I won’t list them out, mainly because I can’t recall them offhand. Still referred to the wizard, though. They were Eryptian gods, to fit Black Adam’s origin in ancient Egypt: Shu (stamina) Hershef (strength) Amon (power) Zehuti (Thoth) (wisdom) Anpu (speed) Menthu (courage) There’s also [Sabbac](https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/shazam/images/1/1d/Sabbac.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20090628213849),\* who has a similar deal, but instead of getting his powers from Shazam, he gets them from Hell, by invoking the names of powerful demons: Satan Aym Belial Beelzebub Asmodeus Craeteis Also, [Ibac](https://www.writeups.org/wp-content/uploads/Ibac-DC-Comics-Fawcett-Captain-Marvel-a.jpg), who gains magical power by saying a name made up of a bunch of humans who were real assholes: Ivan (the Terrible) Borgia (Cesare, specifically) Attila Caligula \*Not to be confused with sabaac, which is a card game in the Star Wars universe. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2019, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-captain-marvel-be-a-woman/831594/69 "2019-03-29T02:27:51Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > In the 1930s, the people creating comic books weren’t the kind that cared about whether a god was Greek or Roman and how that would explain the “-verse.” No, of course not. They just came up with whatever names they could remember. They didn’t care if krypton was a noble gas or a planet. But “Shazam” is a particularly notable mish-mosh of names. > [@kaylasdad99](#): > > And a day job of being Billy Batson, a not-particularly-remarkable nebbish of a lad who could turn into the aforementioned buff dude by doing an impression of Gomer Pyle (“SHAZAM!”). Interestingly, it seems that [“Shazam” didn’t start appearing in print (outside of comic books) until Gomer started saying it in 1962.](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Shazam&year_start=1908&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2CShazam%3B%2Cc0) ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2019, 3:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-captain-marvel-be-a-woman/831594/70 "2019-03-29T03:04:03Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > No, of course not. They just came up with whatever names they could remember. They didn’t care if krypton was a noble gas or a planet. But “Shazam” is a particularly notable mish-mosh of names. [hijack] I’d of course noticed before that Krypton was doing double duty as a planet in the comics and an element in real life, but I don’t think I’d ever noticed that it was just following the example of Mercury being a planet in real life and an element in real life _and_ the Roman god in the mish-mosh of names that is “Shazam”. [/hijack] ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2019, 2:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-captain-marvel-be-a-woman/831594/71 "2019-03-29T14:01:09Z")
As an aside, “Mercury” as the name of the element has a convoluted history. It used to be called “quicksilver” (and sometimes still is, in poetical contexts), or “water-silver” (hydrargyros, whence “Hg”). But the old alchemists were very secretive about their trade, and so often kept their notes in a sort of code based on astronomical notation. And the symbol used for quicksilver was the symbol for Mercury, the planet. When chemistry moved from the secretive alchemists to being a proper scientific discipline, the secret code-name stuck. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2019, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-captain-marvel-be-a-woman/831594/72 "2019-03-29T15:06:00Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > As an aside, “Mercury” as the name of the element has a convoluted history. It used to be called “quicksilver” (and sometimes still is, in poetical contexts), or “water-silver” (hydrargyros, whence “Hg”). But the old alchemists were very secretive about their trade, and so often kept their notes in a sort of code based on astronomical notation. And the symbol used for quicksilver was the symbol for Mercury, the planet. When chemistry moved from the secretive alchemists to being a proper scientific discipline, the secret code-name stuck. Interesting. I would assume that it was connected with Mercury, the messenger of the gods, because it moved so rapidly in droplet form (hence quicksilver). And the planet was connected with the god because it moves across the sky more rapidly than any other planet. I see that the element is called the same way in French and Spanish (mercure, mercurio) but in German it remains Quecksilber (while the planet is Merkur). ---
**Author:** ![Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/earl_snake-hips_tucker/32/3269_2.png) [@Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Earl_Snake-Hips_Tucker)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2019, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-captain-marvel-be-a-woman/831594/73 "2019-03-29T17:09:05Z")
Very briefly, Captain Marvel was also a [splitting android](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Marvel_(M._F._Enterprises)). ETA: And I assumed that ‘quicksilver’ meant ‘living silver,’ in that it was somewhat silvery, and it flowed. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2019, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-captain-marvel-be-a-woman/831594/74 "2019-03-29T17:31:03Z")
> [@Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](#): > > ETA: And I assumed that ‘quicksilver’ meant ‘living silver,’ in that it was somewhat silvery, and it flowed. [That appears to be the original etymology](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/quicksilver). However, that does not preclude its later association with Mercury (the god and/or) planet being due to its rapid movement. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2019, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-captain-marvel-be-a-woman/831594/75 "2019-03-29T17:55:14Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > Interesting. I would assume that it was connected with Mercury, the messenger of the gods, because it moved so rapidly in droplet form (hence quicksilver). And the planet was connected with the god because it moves across the sky more rapidly than any other planet. > > I see that the element is called the same way in French and Spanish (mercure, mercurio) but in German it remains Quecksilber (while the planet is Merkur). There’s a very long standing identification of the seven classical metals with the seven classical planets. Sun - Gold Mercury - Quicksilver Venus - Copper Moon - Silver Mars - Iron Jupiter - Tin Saturn - Lead ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2019, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-captain-marvel-be-a-woman/831594/76 "2019-03-29T18:06:57Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > There’s a very long standing identification of the seven classical metals with the seven classical planets. > > Sun - Gold > Mercury - Quicksilver > Venus - Copper > Moon - Silver > Mars - Iron > Jupiter - Tin > Saturn - Lead I hadn’t realized that there were seven classical metals. Since we’re on the subject of comics, I have to bring up one of my favorites, [Metal Men](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_Men). The group corresponds mostly to the classical metals, except for dropping Copper and substituting Platinum for Siliver. I’m curious how Jupiter got associated with such a commonplace metal as tin, seemingly the least valuable of the group. ---
**Author:** ![Morgyn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/morgyn/32/3041_2.png) [@Morgyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morgyn)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2019, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-captain-marvel-be-a-woman/831594/77 "2019-03-29T21:39:17Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > I’m curious how Jupiter got associated with such a commonplace metal as tin, seemingly the least valuable of the group. It isn’t worth much _now_, but in ancient times it was worth a lot because it was rare and it was also required to create bronze weapons, which held a harder edge than plain copper. Bronze weapons were the super weapon of their time when they were first invented. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2019, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-captain-marvel-be-a-woman/831594/78 "2019-03-29T22:04:46Z")
> [@Morgyn](#): > > It isn’t worth much _now_, but in ancient times it was worth a lot because it was rare and it was also required to create bronze weapons, which held a harder edge than plain copper. Bronze weapons were the super weapon of their time when they were first invented. But how far do these associations go back? The Bronze Age/Iron Age transition in Italy was around 1000 BC. ---
**Author:** ![Morgyn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/morgyn/32/3041_2.png) [@Morgyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morgyn)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2019, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-captain-marvel-be-a-woman/831594/79 "2019-03-29T22:54:04Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > But how far do these associations go back? The Bronze Age/Iron Age transition in Italy was around 1000 BC. According to Wikipedia, they were the only elemental metals known “[until the discovery of arsenic in the 13th century](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metals_of_antiquity)”, and they’d been known since prehistoric times. As for the planetary associations, that seems to have arisen [from the practice of alchemy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_planet), which was fraught with religious symbolism from the Babylonian/Greek eras. So, a long, long time ago. And I may have to find books on this, because interesting. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2019, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-captain-marvel-be-a-woman/831594/80 "2019-03-29T23:57:01Z")
> [@Morgyn](#): > > According to Wikipedia, they were the only elemental metals known “[until the discovery of arsenic in the 13th century](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metals_of_antiquity)”, and they’d been known since prehistoric times. As for the planetary associations, that seems to have arisen [from the practice of alchemy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_planet), which was fraught with religious symbolism from the Babylonian/Greek eras. That was really my question. Even if tin was valuable in the Bronze Age, it would have been much less so by the time of the alchemists, making the association of one of the basest metals with the noblest planet puzzling. The other planetary associations aren’t too hard to figure out. Gold for the Sun and silver for the Moon are obviously references to their color. Copper was used for mirrors, which was the symbol of the lovely Venus. Iron was used for weapons, linking it to Mars, the god of war; the planet’s rusty color may have been another link. Mercury, the fastest planet, was linked to quicksilver, and Saturn, the slowest planet, to heavy lead. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-captain-marvel-be-a-woman/831594.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-captain-marvel-be-a-woman/831594.md?page=5)