Everyone has a Captain Marvel

Every writer and every artist in comics has a Captain Marvel character. It would be tempting to say it's because it's this big cash cow and you gotta have one to print money and all that crap, but I don't think that's true.

I think Captain Marvel keeps popping into people's heads because he's a fantastic character, he generates a sense of wonder and play both of which are essential for our mental health, and he's very inspiring- taking us back to our own childhoods where all we needed was a lightning bolt of imagination and we could be Captain Marvel- or anything or anyone else we imagine or are inspired by.

There are a few lists of Captain Marvel analogues around on the web, a couple of the best ones are outside the comics industry per se.

Even perhaps unlikely characters such as Thor have the same basic power of transformation- blast of energy: change of form. An alter ego in a flash of light.

This flash of light, particularly if it's yellow, pink or green, is associated in real life with some terribly serious medical conditions including tumours, schizophrenia, dissociative personality disorder and more. It's interesting beyond the obvious points that Phillip K. Dick was one experiencer of the pink light. It didn't turn him into Captain Marvel.

And a further tangent- Captain Marvel Jr. was the absolute favourite character of Elvis Presley.

Fur-reaky.