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 remained unpublished, alongside the rest of the Marvel Family, for years.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 (DC Comics) "Earth-S". The Fawcett material was still considered canon, with the Marvel Family's 20-year layoff explained in the comic as time spent in suspended animation due to Doctor Sivana. While the series began with a great deal of fanfare, the book had a lackluster reception. The creators themselves had misgivings. Beck said, "As an illustrator, I could, in the old days, make a good story better by bringing it to life with drawings. But I couldn't bring the new [Captain Marvel] stories to life no matter how hard I tried". "Shazam!" was heavily rewritten as of issue #34 (April 1978), and