Quibbles: 1) EC Comics was published by Bill Gaines, not Max Gaines. Max was his dad, who published All American Comics. 2) Bill Gaines got even by pouring all of his resources into Mad Magazine. Most of his good artists and writers went with him. 3) All the confusion didn't stop Filmation from doing a 3-season run of Shazam! in the '70s, long before Moore and Gaiman got involved. Those rights were then and are now held by CBS/Viacom. Comics fans love to get all spun up about MarvelMan but in the end, a giant American multimedia conglomerate has held locked-down title to Captain Marvel for half a century. Considering how a little title confusion cost Warner Brothers 8% gross participation in Watchmen, all this song'n'dance with Gaiman is nice'n'all but the minute there's real money on the table, Viacom is gonna say "that's ours, thanks, appreciate your marketing now fuck off."
Don't you mean Time Warner will say that's our money The TV show came later and DC bought the character in 1980, seemingly also acquiring Isis from the same show as she's been in DC since.When superhero comics became popular again in the mid-1960s in what is now called the "Silver Age of Comic Books," Fawcett was unable to revive Captain Marvel, having agreed never to publish the character again as part of their 1953 settlement. Looking for new properties to introduce to the DC Comics line, DC publisher Carmine Infantino decided to bring the Captain Marvel property back into print, and licensed the characters from Fawcett in 1972 in preparation for such a revival.