The Beginning of Mary Marvel's Years of Misery

[espanolbot]

Or, How Mary Marvel Ended Up In a Hospital At the Beginning of Countdown!

With the reveal of the new "improved" Geoff Johns version of Captain Marvel, sorry, Shazam, I got into the mood to post some of Judd Winick's miniseries 'First Thunder'. But in the meantime, here are some scans as to why it sucked to be Mary Marvel in the mid- to late 2000s...

At some point after 52, Mary Batson lost her powers, possibly due to the events in Trials of Shazam miniseries (also by Winick). That mini was about how Captain Marvel Jr. had to perform a series of tests to prove himself worthy of succeeding Billy Batson as Captain Marvel, as Billy had taken Shazam's role as Caretaker of the Rock of Eternity at the time.

Due to the tests being between Freddie and groups of other magicians to see whether the Marvel Family has the right to the powers of Shazam or not, I suppose it makes sense that they'd take Mary's powers away until the matter was resolved.

Unfortunately, the time and place Mary was in made the unwarned depowering was... kind of bad.



After falling from three miles up and ended up in a coma, it turned out that none of her family (neither Billy and the Marvels nor her wealthy adoptive parents) came to see her in the hospital. Naturally this was only the START of her troubles...

From Brave New World 1

Comments

[his_spiffynesss]

The world doesn't hate Mary Marvel, just Dan Didio.

[eyz]

Didio hates Mary or the world hates Didio?

Wait - works both ways :P

[gerardotejada]

Didio hates not only the Marvel Family, but also Nightwing and Kyle Rayner (come on! Kyle?! not even Geoff Johns hate Kyle or any one with a ring). Also Donna Troy, He though Cassi was enough (not even mentioning Batman had 4 or 5 robins).

He also hates every city on DCU besides Metropolis and Gotham because he thinks they are too generic, also hates that Green Arrow is so old so he ordered to kill a few partners and some family (LIAN!!!!) without mentioning demanding to shave his epic beard. Robinson tried to protect us but finally the reboot did Didio´s dirty work

I think the only casuality that wasnt his fault were Sue Dibny (I must confes that I like Identity Crisis [but hate the rape thing, I like It for the Tim Drake part, Monologues of Ollie and Deathstroke action] and am waiting for a "Ghost Detectives" series in the Vertigo label, if only).

Also Stephanie Brown was killed because some Editor (maybe Didio) thought that she was the Scrappy Doo of the Batman books, and while I agree It only took Q. Miller a couple of numbers to change all that and made her one of the best characters under the Bat Label (Special thanks to Niscienza, Morrison and Snyder to came with a way of keeping both Cass and Steph as vigilantes, negative points to Snyder for not puting Steph on Gates of Gotham)

[arctis]

I'm pretty sure Freddy visited her in the Trials of Shazam mini, while she was still in the coma.

[jaybee3]

Freddy was the only one shown visiting her (not even her parents!) and paying for her medical bills (her parents are rich!) and then he split before she woke up leaving behind a single sheet of paper that said "Don't look for me". Classy, no?

[auggie18]

What makes me mad was how mean-spirited the whole thing was. Starting with this. (And seriously, it was weird that her parents didn't visit.)

[jaybee3]

Those are the exact words I was thinking of. "Mean-spirited". One can not read the Mary Marvel arc during this period (from Trials to Countdown to Final Crisis to even JSA) and not come away thinking the writers (and even some of the artists with their zillion panty shots of a minor) really REALLY disliked the character and wanted to hurt her.

It showed. It really showed.

[q99]

Yea, The whole thing really isn't in my head-canon since 'mean spirited' and 'Marvel' don't mix.

[jlroberson]

Which is a shame. Because done right, Mary Marvel has been, from her start, one of the most empowering female superhero characters in comics.She's like the embodiment of the "spunky" girl of the 40s(the adult version being the "we can do it!" woman). All love to De Matteis and Giffen, but their only true misstep was in characterizing her as a naive goody-goody. (same problem I had with their Captain Marvel) No, Mary was the kind of girl who would happily beat up a whole room of criminals, which is the first thing she ever did with her powers.

[gerardotejada]

I repeat, Miss Martian suplanted Mary as a character when she was in a comma.

[gerardotejada]

It was the Magic of Countdown, personally I never see that Mary was treated in a unrespectfull way on either JSA or Final Crisis, in both books they had to deal with her being "evil" from Countdown, In Final Crisis she only mattered because she was somewhat conected to Apokolips (as everything else).

She was a damaged good when he came into those books and there were no robin with a deus ex machina serum to save us of some editor moronity, It just take seconds to screw a whole story arc.

As I didnt read countdown I just asumed Mary was the first of the new wave of female furies and justifiers from Apokolips.

[gerardotejada]

Nor did I read the Trials of Shazam, the role of Mary Marvel in Final Crisis is the one of a cameo. Maybe If I read Countdown and Trials then Final Crisis could seem like a mean spirited way of writing Mary, maybe Morrison did hate that incarnation of the characters and maybe no one around was wanting to spend time and work on fixing all the mess.

I can relate since I was dreaming of an Ollie & Dinah book since ever (not just a Green Arrow Book with Dina) and I really hated Winnick´s take on Ollie, no simpathy for him or Dinah.

[jaybee3]

Not only not Billy, not her parents, not her Fawcett City friends but NONE of her super-hero friends either - including people like the Flash or Superman who had super-speed and could zip in and out to see how she was, not Fire who she reputedly "roomed with" in the SuperBuddies books, nor any other hero, particularly members of the Justice League (Morrison's Big 7) who (in the Power of Shazam series) explicitly all said they would watch over the 2 Batson siblings. Then we're supposed to believe that Freddy bankrupted himself to take care of Mary's medical bills (even though her parents WERE/ARE wealthy and her brother is on a first-name basis with billionaires) and leaves her a Dear John letter before she even gets out of the hospital where NO ONE is there when she leaves (a 16 year old girl who just got out of 6 month coma). WTF?

That's not even getting into how everyone (literally) treated her like some kind of crazy joke in Countdown. We even had that scene where Zatanna is more interested in spiking Wonder Girl and Supergirl's drinks and muttering what a "brat" Mary Mary is at Black Canary's bachelorette party (I think) after literally kicking a scared, confused and alone (and counseled by Eclipso which Zatanna didn't even notice) Mary out into the street. So all these super-heroines (including WW, no?) can go to a party together but no one of them can visit Mary Marvel in the hospital (and there WERE plenty of heroes who knew Mary Batson=Mary Marvel). That's classic Super-Dickery right there.

Through it all DC didn't seem to have one single writer (not one) who was familiar with in-continuity non-SuperBuddies versions of Mary Marvel to write her story. Some of them (the Countdown writers and Grant Morrison in his interviews) even took care to bring up the fact how much they enjoyed subverting her goody-goody image. Judd Winick, who prior to "Trials of Shazam" was always talking about his love of the Marvel Family, not only quasi-fridged Mary (notice how neither Billy nor Freddy got abused or put into a coma so Mary could go on a "heroic" quest) but then ignored her canon parents and friends (which she had in the Power of Shazam books) so Freddy could carry the burden on himself and be shown to be the ONLY person caring or even paying attention to her (the way Billy was written to make this happen is lazy writing at its finest).

Mary Marvel was one the idol of millions of girls and outsold most male super-heroes during her heyday and only Wonder Woman pre-dates her (by just a year) in DC's pantheon of well-known heroines still used. She deserved better than that.

To bring back my favorite quote about what Mary went through during this period by Mark Waid:"A lot of what Mary’s gone through over the past decade or so has nothing to do with what’s broken or not broken about the concept, and everything to do with a bunch of creepy-ass older men working out their issues. Just thinking about it makes me want to take a Silkwood shower. It takes more imagination than most comics creators have to find something interesting about a good girl, but it’s not impossible."

[q99]

-To bring back my favorite quote about what Mary went through during this period by Mark Waid:"A lot of what Mary’s gone through over the past decade or so has nothing to do with what’s broken or not broken about the concept, and everything to do with a bunch of creepy-ass older men working out their issues. -

Quite.

[gerardotejada]

So in other way putting her in a Comma was for her own proctecion, like when you put characters in limbo so they dont get published just for the sake of beign published?

I think they should just stop writing characters just because they have them, obiously Morrison didnt plan to write Barry, It shows all over the book.

You know what character was written like Mary Marvel should be Written? Miss Martian. She even had an arc when she fitghed with her "dark side" It was delightfull AND funny.

PD: Really? Morrison? I know a lot about his writting to know he was bluffing, he didnt subverted, deconstructed or whatsoever to the concept of Mary Marvel not more than show her as an example of the absolute corruption of Darkseid.

Like when Paul Cornell wanted to demostrate how horrendous something was he had the Joker petrified in fear.

But the whole "subverting Mary Marvel" was just one of his tipical bluffings

[big_daddy_d]

Youk now..when I saw Nostalgia Chick's review of Milo and Otis..my primary thought was..."Ok someone seriously hates cats and need to not be in charge of handling them...ever." I'm saying the same thing for this... someone at DC clearly hates Mary Marvel and should be banned from handling her or anything Marvel Family.