Uncle Marvel - History

History

An old, rotund man named Dudley, Uncle Marvel did not have any real superpowers. He found Mary Batson's good deed ledger which she kept to record her good deeds but had dropped and read it, learning her secret. Claiming to be the uncle of Mary Batson, Mary Marvel's teenage alter-ego, from California, Dudley attempted to con his way into the Marvel Family. The Marvels, possessing the wisdom of Solomon, saw through Dudley's machinations, but since he was, in their opinion, such a "lovable old fraud", they allowed Dudley to join the team as their manager, Uncle Marvel, and humored his pretense of having Marvel powers. When asked to make use of his supposed superpowers, Dudley would always complain that his "shazambago" was acting up and was interfering with his powers, though the Marvels always knew better. In Marvel Family #1 he defeats the rogue Marvel Black Adam by tricking him into turning back by saying Shazam wrong, causing Black Adam to correct him, but mostly he was just comic relief. In Mary Marvel #7, after Mary stops some thugs, he makes Mary promise not to turn into Mary Marvel until midnight, to show she is helpless without Mary Marvel. He then sends two men to rob the office, which she stops with her own fighting skills but his own blunder allows them to escape, then kidnap her for a joke, not realizing they are real crooks and plan to hold her to ransom. She is kidnapped from her bed, bound and gagged, and taken to Uncle, who reveals it was a joke, at which point the criminals reveal their true colors. He removes her gag, but it is three minutes till midnight, so she cannot transform, making Uncle regret the promise he made her make. Finally, as the criminals tell Uncle to write the ransom note, Mary sees a clock strike midnight and transforms, defeating the crooks.

Uncle Marvel continued to appear in the Marvel Family stories through 1948, at which time the character was quietly dropped. He returned to the Marvel Family comics when DC Comics began publishing new stories and reprints under the title Shazam! in 1973, he was put into suspended animation along with many Fawcett characters by and with the Sivanas it was explained. He again takes over Shazam Incorpotated. After forty years of appearing in the Marvel Family comics, Uncle Dudley was revamped in 1987 along with the rest of the Shazam! franchise. In Roy Thomas and Tom Mandrake's four-issue 1987 miniseries Shazam! The New Beginning, the character became Dudley Batson, an actual blood uncle of young Billy Batson, Captain Marvel's alter-ego.

A second revamped version of Uncle Marvel was introduced in Jerry Ordway's Power of Shazam! graphic novel in 1994 and a resulting ongoing comic book series of the same name, rendering Thomas and Mandrake's version non-canonical. In Ordway's stories, Dudley H. Dudley is the janitor at Billy Batson's school, who looks out for the homeless boy and inadvertently learns that Billy is also the alter ego of Captain Marvel. This revelation leads Dudley to be involved in a number of Marvel Family adventures, including one story (The Power of Shazam! #11 and #12) in which Dudley temporarily gains superpowers (and the "Uncle Marvel" costume of the original version of the character), thanks to Ibis the Invincible so he can help round up the escaped Seven Deadly enemies of Man. Dudley continued to appear in The Power of Shazam! for the duration of the series as a recurring supporting character, often paired with Tawky Tawny, an anthropomorphic tiger friend of Captain Marvel's who becomes Dudley's roommate.

Following the cancellation of The Power of Shazam! in 1999, "Uncle" Dudley virtually disappeared from DC Comics publications, save for a short cameo in 52 #16 at the wedding of Marvel Family related characters Black Adam and Isis and two brief cameos in Jerry Ordway-illustrated issues of Justice Society of America in 2009 (Vol. 3, #24 and #28).