I Met... CAPTAIN MARVEL JR.!

I Met Captain Marvel Jr.!

It was a bit of a toss up between attending the Cleveland Fan Expo or Lexington (Ky.) Comic and Toy Con.  Cleveland won because of an appearance by one of my all-time favorite artists (more on that in a future post).  

Lots of cool celebs in Cleveland, but the most popular are out of my price range.  Zachary Levi, who portrayed Captain Marvel in Shazam! (2019) and Shazam!: Fury of the Gods (2023) is charging $120 for an autograph and $140 for a photo session.  So I went with the Junior version and much cheaper Jack Dylan Grazer.

Jack played Freddy Freeman alongside Zachary Levi's Captain Marvel and Asher Angel's Billy Batson in both Shazam movies.  Adam Brody portrayed the adult/super-powered version of Freddy, whom I will call "Captain Marvel Jr."

Freddy first appeared in Whiz Comics #25 (Dec. 1941).  While Captain Marvel Jr. is similar to Captain Marvel, there are a few twists on the concept: Freddy is traditionally disabled as Freddy and not disabled as Captain Marvel Jr.  Freddy remains the same age after his transformation to Captain Marvel Jr., whereas young Billy becomes the adult Captain Marvel.  Billy says the magic word "Shazam!" to tranform into Captain Marvel.  Freddy traditionally has said the name "Captain Marvel," which means he cannot say his own super-hero name without transforming.  Captain Marvel's costume is red with a white cape and gold accents.  Captain Marvel Jr.'s is blue with a red cape and gold accents.  Freddy is not referred to as Captain Marvel Jr. in the movies, but his code name is alluded to when Freddy refers to Billy as Captain Everypower Jr.

My parents, my children, and I saw Shazam!: Fury of the Gods this past Monday and I have never laughed so hard during a super-hero movie.   I shared this with Jack as he signed the photo above and chewed strong-smelling bubble gum.  I told him I was keeping my fingers crossed for a third installment (as set up in the post-credits scenes of the two films), but his facial expression indicated it would take a lot more than that for the third film to be made.     

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