Justice and the Fourth Branch of Government
It’s unfathomable.

What has happened to the only Superpower.

To find out, we need a Superhero.

And we’ve found the last remaining Superhero.

Billy Batson who by merely uttering the word “Shazam…” turns into
Captain Marvel.

A lot of the world has bypassed Captain Marvel, one must admit, considering that he has always played second fiddle to Superman and the lately rediscovered Spider man, who in the old days was certainly no Green Lantern or Submariner…

But I guess tenacity has paid off for the web-spinner…that and a contract with Warner Brothers…

To tell the truth, Captain Marvel has been keeping a low profile on purpose over the last few decades since the war years, in fact, thinking that all of the “superhero” stuff has been done already and to repeat it, would be somewhat redundant and somehow unworthy…

However, when Cheney came on the scene, Captain Marvel thought it was a return to the days of the Evil Doctor Sylvania, which many believe it is…

This version of the “Evil One”goes even one better than the comic book creators imagined. This is a guy who is so bad that If he likes you, he goes hunting with you and shoots you in the face… Imagine what happens if he doesn’t like you.

It’s also interesting that he lives underground and he’s part mechanical.

That seems to fit in perfectly with the super villain character.

Well, to make a long story even longer, you can’t have a super villain without a super hero, so Captain Marvel was forced to come out of retirement to find out why Americans haven’t already done in the evil Dr. Sylvania.

In getting ready for his new adventure and waiting for his uniform to come back from that Korean dry cleaner, Captain Marvel recalls that before he went into suspended animation (pun intended), America believed in three things: apple pie, mom and the American way.

Were those three symbols still relevant or was there something else guiding America’s ways in the days of ultimate terrorism?

After flying around and asking that question, Captain Marvel found himself in a quandary.

Why?

Because he discovered that he was out of the loop.

The three things that counted most to Americans today were not mom, apple pie and the American way, it was : Abs. Babes. And tubus bubus, better known as the Boob tube…

He didn’t know about any of them which led him to posit the question: Was the problem the Evil Doctor or ourselves…. Had we all been brain-washed with thimbles full of water?

Were we too self involved to ever fight evil?

Were our washboard abs more important than who was poisoning our air and water?

Was the TV the soporific that helped us sleep through elections past simply provided a gateway for Evil to evolve out of the steaming Texas swamps?

This was all too much for the poor Captain to absorb in any one session… Maybe the time for real super heroes was really gone forever…

So he went to the gym, exercised, had a few brewskis and left it all up to the new administration to sort out….

Anyway, Shazam sounded too much like an Arab name and already his friends were starting to think he was part of a sleeper cell….

Moreover, being a captain in this day and age was more a sure fire reason for getting called up for sixteen months of duty with the likelihood that you could get your brain so shaken up you wouldn’t be much good to anyone.

Sometimes, you have to know when to keep a low profile.

No fool our captain…


Les Aaron
The Armchair Curmudgeon