DC ultimately solved the problem by renaming Captain Marvel Shazam, and renaming Shazam the wizard The Wizard. What little explanation they gave struck a note of capitulation to popular tastes, as in Shazam scriptwriter Geoff Johns' account:
Everybody thinks hes Shazam already, outside of comics. Its also, for all sorts of reasons, calling him Shazam just made sense for us. And, you know, every comic book hes in right now has "Shazam" on the cover.
In other words, what will determine Billy Batsons future is what the people outside of comics think. They just barely remember the Shazam name from his TV appearances, but they do know the Marvel name and using it is practically advertising the competition. Also, we decided to use the name for him that we were using for him on the covers, because we were using it. Also, the name makes sense, for reasons. That same year, the music-identification service also called Shazam grew to two million active users per week, more people than had bought a single issue of Captain Marvel at the height of Billys popularity.
T Campbell has written quite a few online comics series and selected work for Marvel, Archie and Tokyopop. His longest-running works are Fans, Penny and Aggie-- and his current project with co-writer Phil Kahn, Guilded Age.
