Recently following the conclusion of one of my “Once Upon a Year” programs I stopped to chat with a resident of The Village. He was also a colleague from my former place of gainful employment who had attended the program. Throughout the presentation I play music from the particular year.
Songs from 1948 included Perry Como’s “Because” and the Pied Piper’s (no rats or children with this group) “My Happiness.” He proceeded to show me his watch. This was different from my old-fashioned hands-moving Seiko.
His had a microphone which when exposed to music goes to the internet and locates the album of the artist. WOW! Thisdevice was many times more powerful than the 4K IBM 1401 computer I first learned to program. He told me the application on the phone was called “SHAZAM.
” That made me smile. I asked if he knew the origin of the word. No — I wasn’t surprised, he’s several years younger (a great many are) — so I shared my comic book history with him.
I was too young to have purchased the first comic in which the character uttered “SHAZAM” but in my comic book buying days of the late 1940s I’d owned a number headlined by the superhero who used it to trigger his super powers. His name is Captain Marvel and he first appeared in “Whiz Comics #2 (cover-dated February 1940). Captain Marvel is the alter ego of Billy Batson, a newspaper boy.
However, when Billy says “SHAZAM” he is transformed into a costumed adult with the powers of.
