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We Didn’t Know... It Was The Golden Age!
Endurance Flight Mickey Malone, the Phantom Eagle, was Marc’s regular assignment during the mid- and later 1940s, up till the day the Wow Comics feature was cancelled. It was his longest ongoing assignment in comic books. [©2008 the respective copyright holders.]
“Memories… Pressed Between The Pages Of My Mind” “My preference was to remember him just as I had drawn and written him in the Golden Age….” A rare Captain Marvel illustration by Marc Swayze. [Shazam! heroes TM & ©2008 DC Comics.]
And I am thankful for that. Was I disturbed in the early ’50s, at the report that Captain Marvel was to be discontinued forever? Of course not. I simply refused to believe it. Captain Marvel was not one to be rubbed out with a single sweep of the eraser! And Fawcett, not an organization to permit it! But they were. And he was. We learned that later. And I was disturbed by it. Captain Marvel was one of those fictional friends I knew best. To be perfectly frank about what happened to him … I’m sorry. Who wouldn’t be? I never followed those later attempts to revive the super-hero. A glimpse now and then told me it was not the jovial guy we had known down the street. My preference was to remember him just as I had drawn him and written him in the Golden Age, always easily seen at the end of the pencil or pen in my hand. And we know he’s out there yet, somewhere, don’t we? Waiting to come to the rescue if we need him. And all we have to do is utter that magic word, “SHAZ: … you know! More of Marc Swayze’s memories of the Golden Age will appear in our next issue.
“Captain Marvel Was Not One To Be Rubbed Out With A Single Sweep Of The Eraser” Or maybe he was—at least on C.C. Beck’s cover for Captain Marvel Adventures #97 (June 1949). [©2008 DC Comics.]