- Title: (With One Magic Word…) SHAZAM! #32
- Comic Vine: link
- Writer: E. Nelson Bridwell
- Artist: Tenny Henson
Throwback Thurday takes us back to 1977 and the odd plot of SHAZAM! #32 which has Billy Batson and Uncle Dudley in Detroit to attend a Detroit Tigers baseball game where Tawky Tawny is given a chance to play after a successful tryout. However, the entire visiting baseball team disappears from a plane Captain Marvel saves from crashing.
It turns out they have been kidnapped by Mr. Mind who substitutes his own players for the game bringing in aliens from various worlds and forcing Captain Marvel to take the field for the home team (if a captured Billy can free himself and speak the magic word soon enough to hit the field after the humans fall behind 28-2). It’s a goofy issue that plays on Tawny’s tigerness to an extent, but is really more of a standard Captain Marvel adventure of our hero saving the day at the last possible moment once again.
SHAZAM! #32 is a bizarre story for a comic on its way out. Only three more issues would be printed before its cancellation. The tone was meant to closer resemble that of the television show which was about to start its last, and shortest, season as well (only consisting of 6 episodes) as half of The SHAZAM!/Isis Hour.
The entire alien baseball team is made up of one-off characters that never appeared before or since (rather than make uses of Captain Marvel’s extensive, and odd, rogues gallery). Baseball, as it turns out, doesn’t work well in comic panels, with most of our hero’s antics in the field kept to a single panel. That said, there are some bright spots such as Tawny’s tryout, and his game-winning home-run, and the sheer wackiness the concept offers.
[DC, $.35]