WB has no idea what they are doing. If Disney owned the Marvel Family (just like if they owned Wonder Woman) we would see the Marvels with their own merchandise (for all of them). Mary would be back front and center to get the young girl market (which was her role in the Golden Age and which DC no longer cares about) and there would be both animated and live-action versions of the characters flooding the Disney pipeline. WB, on the other hand, the company that brought up Harry Potter (and it was Diane Nelson, President of DCE, who was in charge of that). They want "edgier". They want Black Adam.
You know, you're right about that. I have a 20 year old daughter who's very into gamer stuff, cosplay, etc., and she's gotten interested in Marvel comics recently through the movies. I asked her about DC and she said they clearly don't want her money. The only DC hero she really likes is Superman, because she thinks superheroes should be clean, straightforward and heroic, but she "think[s] Superman's dead now or something. There's a different guy, and a different Batman, and [she] can't get interested in any of it." So that's what a 20-year old female potential reader is getting out of the current DC line. (I told her that's really Clark Kent, and she said, "No, who is it really?") Marvel has a lot of strong women in different age groups, which matters a lot to her. She thinks Batgirl is trying so hard to be hip that it's actually condescending, while Kamala Kahn achieves hipness effortlessly through being a geek. I think she'd love a straightforward Shazam-Captain Marvel book or movie. But DC is not bringing it.
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).
There *is* a new DC Super Hero Girls line/cartoon, with a bunch of heroines at a superhero school (Wonder Woman seems to be the main character), it's just separate from the main comics.
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You know, you're right about that. I have a 20 year old daughter who's very into gamer stuff, cosplay, etc., and she's gotten interested in Marvel comics recently through the movies. I asked her about DC and she said they clearly don't want her money. The only DC hero she really likes is Superman, because she thinks superheroes should be clean, straightforward and heroic, but she "think[s] Superman's dead now or something. There's a different guy, and a different Batman, and [she] can't get interested in any of it." So that's what a 20-year old female potential reader is getting out of the current DC line. (I told her that's really Clark Kent, and she said, "No, who is it really?") Marvel has a lot of strong women in different age groups, which matters a lot to her. She thinks Batgirl is trying so hard to be hip that it's actually condescending, while Kamala Kahn achieves hipness effortlessly through being a geek. I think she'd love a straightforward Shazam-Captain Marvel book or movie. But DC is not bringing it.
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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).
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The main comics? Yea, they mostly don't care.