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The company began to move aggressively against what it saw as copyright-violating imitations from other companies, such as Fox Comics ' Wonder Man, which ( according to court testimony ) Fox started as a copy of Superman.

This extended to DC suing Fawcett Comics over Captain Marvel, at the time comics ' top-selling character.

Despite the fact that parallels between Captain Marvel and Superman seemed more tenuous ( Captain Marvel's powers came from magic, unlike Superman's ), the courts ruled that substantial and deliberate copying of copyrighted material had occurred.

Faced with declining sales and the prospect of bankruptcy if it lost, Fawcett capitulated in 1955 and ceased comics publication.

Years later, Fawcett ironically sold the rights for Captain Marvel to DC — which in 1973 revived Captain Marvel in the new title Shazam!

featuring artwork by his creator, C. C. Beck.

In the meantime, the abandoned trademark had been seized by Marvel Comics in 1967, disallowing the DC comic itself to be called that.

While Captain Marvel did not recapture his old popularity, he later appeared in a Saturday morning live action TV adaptation and gained a prominent place in the mainstream continuity DC calls the DC Universe.