The Shazam Captain Marvel was created all the way back in 1939, and DC actually took Fawcett comics to court over the similarities to Superman. The legal troubles gummed up Captain Marvel to the point that he stopped being published in 1953. In 1972, DC acquired licensing rights to him, and then fully purchased Fawcett comics' IP in 1991.
During this hazy legal grey area, two other Captains Marvel appeared. The first showed up in 1960, under Mother Fucker Enterprise's comic line.
He had the power to split his limbs, a power that often crops up among shitty characters that blow, and every other power. He seemed have the Superman flying brick set along with sonic blasts, radio hearing, telekinesis, shapeshifting, and time travel, along with whatever the fuck. His villains were such creative figures as Prof. Doom, the Bat, and Dr. Fate. He showed up in 6 issues, detaching his limbs and manipulating sound until he became a footnote.
The next one was Captain Marvel, or Mar-Vell, in 1967. He was an alien spy of the Kree empire, and actually a surprising font of cosmic Marvel lore, such as the Kree, the Supreme Intelligence, and Ronan the Accuser. He was also trapped in the negative zone, so like the Shazam! Captain Marvel, Marvel Captain Marvel switched placed with a normal human, Rick Jones, using wrist bands. He had a three hour time limit in our positive universe before he would be drawn back into the negatice zone. All that cosmic radiation eventually meant he caught cancer and died.
He had the most generic costume. Imagine a generic superhero costume made by a 12 year old. That's Mar-vell.
About a decade after he died, Carol Danvers, originally debuting as the original Ms. Marvel in 1977, was promoted to being Captain Marvel. Carol Danvers's best moment was slipping into a coma and giving Rogue her cool flying powers
Anyway, the third Captain Marvel is Monica Rambeau, also known as Spectrum, Pulsar, Photon, and a couple of times as "Polaris" in error, which I suspect is caused by people forgetting which of those new names they renamed her to. She showed up in 1982.
Rambeau is probably the best of the three because she had some rather endearing traits, like struggling to control her massive cosmic powers and develop into a leader, painful physical recovery, and appearing in Next Wave. One of the cooler things here is that she often has to deal with the implications of her powers' physics; like, one time she basically fried herself by transforming into a lightning-like state near the ocean's surface. She took in-universe months to build up her strength and regain her abilities.
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