Gail Simone has often said (well she used to often say it) that her favorite superhero was Mary Marvel (and that Mary had a lot of untapped possibility) and that she really wanted to write the Marvel Family. Gail has been at DC (formerly exclusive) for years and was one of their most well-known and regarded writers. As far as I can tell (someone correct me) in all these years she has never written Mary or Billy or Freddy (and I doubt its for lack of trying on her part). The only Marvel DC seemingly would let her write? You guessed it. Black Adam.
It kills me sometimes as a Marvel Family fan to see that not only has DC given up basically the name of Captain Marvel but that Marvel Comics has run with it and not only made Carol Danvers one of their top-tier heroes under that name (a character who just a few years ago in Dark Reign was pushed out of her title and replaced with Moonstone) but that the new Ms. Marvel is basically everything Mary Marvel could be (minus the Muslim part) - a teenager who loves being a superhero and wants to do good in the world and is inspired by the heroism of others. In other words, a role model for girls (and boys, but especially girls).
This is the role that Mary Marvel played in the Golden Age when she sold hundreds of thousands of comics under the "Mary Marvel" banner. We will never see that again (heck in the DCnU she's still not even called "Mary Marvel") and as for an optimistic heroic "nice" girl as a role model? That's not going to happen either. If Countdown, Final Crisis, JSA (three years worth of humiliating storylines and sex jokes about an underage girl, who is the second oldest female heroine in DC's library after WW) shows us anything is that they regard Mary as a joke? And Billy is not far behind (he is literally still the butt of jokes in-universe).
I can only say just based on how they've treated the Power Pack and the Richards kids, and how they've recreated the "Captain Marvel" line, that if Marvel/Disney owned the Shazam franchise they would know better than to go the dark edgy route and they market the heck out of the Marvel Family to THEIR companies target audience (kids/tweens, not males 18-40 like DC).
no subject
It kills me sometimes as a Marvel Family fan to see that not only has DC given up basically the name of Captain Marvel but that Marvel Comics has run with it and not only made Carol Danvers one of their top-tier heroes under that name (a character who just a few years ago in Dark Reign was pushed out of her title and replaced with Moonstone) but that the new Ms. Marvel is basically everything Mary Marvel could be (minus the Muslim part) - a teenager who loves being a superhero and wants to do good in the world and is inspired by the heroism of others. In other words, a role model for girls (and boys, but especially girls).
This is the role that Mary Marvel played in the Golden Age when she sold hundreds of thousands of comics under the "Mary Marvel" banner. We will never see that again (heck in the DCnU she's still not even called "Mary Marvel") and as for an optimistic heroic "nice" girl as a role model? That's not going to happen either. If Countdown, Final Crisis, JSA (three years worth of humiliating storylines and sex jokes about an underage girl, who is the second oldest female heroine in DC's library after WW) shows us anything is that they regard Mary as a joke? And Billy is not far behind (he is literally still the butt of jokes in-universe).
I can only say just based on how they've treated the Power Pack and the Richards kids, and how they've recreated the "Captain Marvel" line, that if Marvel/Disney owned the Shazam franchise they would know better than to go the dark edgy route and they market the heck out of the Marvel Family to THEIR companies target audience (kids/tweens, not males 18-40 like DC).