Captain Marvel Jr. character as resembling Tiny Tim as Freddy Freeman, and Peter Pan as Captain Marvel Jr.). Junior, Captain Marvel, and Mary Marvel began appearing together in "The Marvel Family" comic book beginning in 1945. That title and Junior's own ran until 1953, when Fawcett Publications discontinued all the Marvel Family comic books as the result of a lawsuit brought by National Comics (later DC Comics). After Fawcett Comics folded, Captain Marvel Jr. remained unpublished, alongside the rest of the Marvel Family, for years. In 1972, DC Comics purchased the rights to the Marvel Family characters and revived them in a new
Captain Marvel (Mar-Vell) current. This had the effect of requiring DC Comics, which in the meantime licensed the original Fawcett Captain Marvel for publication, to print its new comics under the trademark "Shazam!" Comics historian Don Markstein states, "Marvel didn't seem to quite know what to do with him—but they did put his comic out every other month through most of the 1970s, if only to maintain their trademark on his name." When "Captain Marvel" was cancelled with issue #62 (May 1979), there were five as-yet unpublished issues already complete or near-complete. The series "Marvel Spotlight" was revived for the express purpose of