#fawcett

Estoy segura de que Billy sería el tipo de niño que lleva pañuelos de tela para dar a la gente, cuando se vuelve Capitan Marvel/ Shazam y explora la roca, se encuentra con una antigua sala con telas suaves, que se vuelve, con ayuda de los dioses y el YouTube, en prendas cómodas y elegantes que usa en la roca y a veces fuera, junto con un par de pañuelos bordando con hilo rojo, azul, verde y amarillo pequeñas flores (siendo al parecer un hilo mágico dando fuerza, protección, prosperidad y pequeña magia quien lo tenía) y con hilo dorado (que posteriormente se enteró que era de oro real y puro) pequeños rayos para su forma de Capitan Marvel / Shazam.

Me imagino a Billy entregando pañuelos a otros niños sin hogar, necesitados de consuelo y protección. Mientras que, Capitan Marvel / Shazam, viendo a una civil llorar, se acerca y entrega uno de sus pañuelos. Sin darse cuenta es grabado por un reportero que lo hace público. Haciendo a tendo tendencia al Capitan. Posteriormente, cuando se une a la liga y va a una entrevista le pregunta de la situación en específico y el solo "es lo mínimo que puedo hacer si veo alguien llorar". Lo que le hace más famoso porque bueno, dos metros, guapo, amable, carismático y caballeroso, es un sueño para los solteros.

Ahora civiles que comienzan a "llorar" cuando ven al Capitan llegar. Lo que era un apoyo emocional, se convierte de un regaño ligero por parte del Capitan, lo que le aún más famoso, porque "este hombre enojado es sexy". Lo que incomoda mucho a Billy. Cuando le entrevistan de nuevo, declaró que le incomoda la situación y pide públicamente que dejen de fingir llorar, es grosero y le ponen triste por regañar personas. Curiosamente, esto funciona.

La cosa vuelve a escalar, cuando menciona que el teje los patrones de sus pañuelos.

I am sure Billy would be the type of kid who carries cloth handkerchiefs to give to people. When he becomes Captain Marvel/Shazam and explores the Rock, he stumbles upon an ancient room filled with soft fabrics, which he turns—with the help of the gods and YouTube—into comfortable, elegant clothes that he wears inside the Rock and sometimes outside.

Along with the clothes, he makes a couple of handkerchiefs, embroidering little flowers using red, blue, green, and yellow thread (which turns out to be magical thread, granting strength, protection, prosperity, and a touch of magic to whoever holds them). He also uses gold thread—which he later found out was actual, pure gold—to embroider little lightning bolts for his Captain Marvel/Shazam form.

I can imagine Billy giving these handkerchiefs to other homeless kids who are in need of comfort and protection. Meanwhile, Captain Marvel/Shazam, seeing a crying civilian, approaches them and hands them one of his handkerchiefs. Without realizing it, he gets caught on camera by a reporter who shares the footage, making the Captain go viral.

Later on, after he joins the League and goes on an interview, they ask him about this specific situation, and he simply says, "It's the least I can do if I see someone crying."

Which makes him even more famous because, well—being six-foot-six, handsome, kind, charismatic, and a perfect gentleman—he is basically a dream come true for single people everywhere.

Soon, civilians start 'crying' on purpose whenever they see the Captain coming. What used to be emotional support turns into gentle scoldings from the Captain, which only makes him more famous because "this man is so sexy when he's angry."

This, of course, makes Billy deeply uncomfortable. When he gets interviewed again, he declares that the situation makes him uncomfortable and publicly begs people to stop faking tears because it's rude and it makes him sad to have to scold people. Surprisingly, this actually works.

The periodicals we call "men's adventure" magazines or "the sweats" were to a great extent derived from a publication that fairly quickly evolved beyond the template. TRUE was published by Fawcett, the company that gave us the original "Shazam" Captain Marvel in comics and the beloved Gold Medal line of paperback originals. It's closer kin to Fawcett's true-crime magazines like STARTLING DETECTIVE MYSTERIES. For the first several years it looked a lot like a true-crime mag:

To true crime TRUE added the sort of exotic adventure stories that would be a big part of the sweats. Those would remain, albeit more refined and credible, as TRUE evolved and the percentage of true-crime content shrunk. As a 1948 TIME magazine article explained, Fawcett wasn't satisfied with circulation and in 1944 gave new editor Bill Williams a mandate to boost circulation by broadening the magazine's appeal. By the time of his untimely death in late 1948 Williams had done that by turning TRUE into a working-class ESQUIRE with more "men's service" content about hunting, cars, clothes, etc. Yet Williams doubled down on its identity as "The Man's Magazine" with rich doses of action-adventure content, especially in its long-form "book bonus" section which often featured stuff we'd think of as "popular history." There was enough demand for old-west stories, for instance, for Fawcett to launch a reprint-padded niche spinoff, TRUE WESTERN ADVENTURES, in the late Fifties.

First of all, it’s got to be said: at a time when a regular issue of a new comic book cost 60 cents, the fact that this first MARVEL GRAPHIC NOVEL was priced at $5.95 was almost intolerable. Yes, it was 64 pages long by a top creator, yes it was on far better paper and was larger overall–the dimensions of a European color album, which is what had inspired the format in the first place. But…

William Heuman specialized in westerns and sports stories -- is the latter still a live genre? This 1952 paperback original is the kind of novel they don't seem to make anymore, unless they're printed on demand. It's under 200 pages, which apparently would make it unprofitable for publishers and maybe unpalatable for modern readers, unless I misperceive a preference for novels at least three times as long. There's no point in claiming this is a neglected classic, because it isn't. It's pretty generic in many respects, especially in its obligatory fistfight between the hero and an oversized brute with surprising speed and agility. Since the pulp West is full of such surprising brutes, why are the heroes always surprised? It'd be more surprising to encounter a big man who fights scientifically, but skill overcoming brute strength is important for the pulp tradition.