The Adventures of Captain Marvel: Curse of the Scorpion

"Shazam!"

You may recall that I blogged, not many months ago, 1949's execrable Batman and Robin, a movie serial so cheap, so badly written, so "that'll do", that it threatened to put me off movie serials for life- especially as my only previous experience, as a twelve(ish) year old boy watching 1943's somewhat racist and very similar Batman on the telly in 1990(ish). I'm only watching this one because a) I need something with short episodes to blog because life is very hectic and exhausting indeed right now and b) I'm assured that this is actually good.

The name "Captain Marvel" is, it's fair to say, reasonanly popular amongst superheroes. Marvel have a current character of that name (Carol Danvers, the former Ms. Marvel) and within the pages of the House of Ideas we have also seen Mar-Vell the Kree superhero and Monica Rambeau, my own generation's Captain Marvel.

But this is 1941, and the first Captain Marvel. And it's not Marvel Comics who own the character- and not is it DC at this point: it's Fawcett Comics, although DC would later buy the company and integrate its characters into their own universe- with the rather pleasing result that Captain Marvel, something of a Superman rip-off, will end up interacting with Kal-El himself. But it's only 1941. That's all ages away.

So is this first episode any good? Well, yes. It is, of course, an origin story based on the familiar trope of a tomb that must not be disturbed for fear of annoying the vaguely superstitious and randomly violent natives. And, well, it's 1941. You didn't think there'd be no racism at all, did you? It's set in "Siam", yet the natives are all beturbaned, suspiciously Caucasian and look very much like the common perception of Afghan tribesmen to me. It very much gives the impression that we're supposed to think that all these vaguely Eastern places are pretty much the same. Edward Said would have a field day with this. But, well, it's 1941. Empires are still a thing. The past is indeed a foreign country. And why would a Thai legend imbue Captain Marvel with attributes from Greek gods?

Despite this, though, the production values, acting and special effects are all good, and it's already clear that this has been made with a lot more care than Batman and Robin. The story is well told and it looks good. So far, so good.