Captain Marvel Adventures #2

History

The issue was published in 1946 by the Vee Publishing Co., the Australian enterprise associated with Stanley Larry Cleland, which had launched that same year riding the post-war demand for American superhero content after wartime bans on imported periodicals had starved the local market. The company reprinted Fawcett material under trade dress closely mimicking the American originals, though exactly how Cleland or Vee Publishing secured the licensing arrangement with Fawcett remains undocumented in surviving records. The interiors were produced in black and white on newsprint to reduce costs, while the cover carried color, a production compromise typical of the era's Australian reprint industry.

Trivia · 8 facts

• Published 1946 by Vee Publishing Co. (Larry S. Cleland), an Australian reprint house that launched that year as the primary local licensee of Fawcett Comics material.
• The cover reprints the cover image from Fawcett's Captain Marvel Adventures #56 (U.S. original); interior stories are drawn from earlier Fawcett issues, including material originally published in Captain Marvel Adventures #7 and #9.
• Reprints the 1st appearance and origin story of Ibac, the villain who gains power by speaking his own name — an acronym drawing on the evil of Ivan the Terrible, Cesare Borgia, Attila the Hun, and Caligula. Beautia Sivana appears as a guest star, and period celebrities Ginger Rogers, Charlie McCarthy, Edgar Bergen, and W.C. Fields appear in cameo.
• Also reprints stories from Fawcett CMA #7, which introduced both Dr. Sarr and the villain known as The Wendigo (Wid Wayland) in their first appearances.
• Story titles included in the issue (per retailer and database records) are 'The Cult of the Curse,' 'Captain Marvel and the Boy Pirate,' and 'Captain Marvel Goes Crazy!'
• Physical format: approximately 8½ × 11¾ inches, 32 pages, color cover with black-and-white interior art on newsprint — the standard Cleland production format.
• The Cleland/Vee Publishing series ran from 1946 to approximately 1957, spanning well over 70 issues, and transitioned to reprinting Charlton Comics material after Fawcett ceased operations in 1953.
• The original Fawcett Captain Marvel Adventures series, the source of all content here, was at its peak the best-selling comic in the United States, with the creative engine of writer Otto Binder and artist C.C. Beck driving the bulk of the material reprinted throughout the Cleland run.

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