Nerding Day: Captain Carvel

I know you're all excited, but I didn't say Captain Marvel. I said this week I'll be covering Captain Carvel And His Carvel Crusaders, a comic book published in 1974 by Carvel Ice Cream. When I picked it up, I assumed it would be about horrifying ice cream monsters and their holy war against the lactose intolerant, and I was mostly correct. If some must die for the glory of a hot fudge sundae, so be it.

This is technically Captain Carvel issue two, but it's the first Captain Carvel in the series with an actual storyline. The first Captain Carvel was just a vehicle to tell children how ice cream is made while introducing a bunch of horrifying ice cream monsters to frighten them into destroying ice cream by eating it. This was a common marketing strategy of the era.

Captain Carvel was the most prominently featured character in the first Carvel comic, but he had a real glow-up before issue two. In the first issue, he's a Stuart Little-sized guy who never leaves his flying ice cream saucer or takes his space helmet off. I'm not sure he can breathe in our atmosphere. The sandwich might be his legs.

Do you think we should let a child hang around the man who goes by Big Sammy Thick Shake? Where are Captain Carvel's teeny tiny parents? I'm worried about him. His only friends seem to be a gang of nightmares from the mind of a lactose-intolerant child. Oh well, I'm sure all of my questions will be quickly answered in issue two, where we will certainly get the origin story of Captain Carvel, right?

Every superhero needs an origin story. We literally had to beg Marvel to stop making the same Fantastic Four origin story movie over and over again, and they said no. Origin stories are only a superhero imperative if you care, even a little bit, about anything more than hawking products to children. This comic book does not, so we spring straight into action with Captain Carvel getting called out of class by a voice from his wrist watch. Wait, Captain Carvel is a regular child named Billy? Billy what? Shut the fuck up, I'm trying to sell you delicious Carvel ice cream.

Is Carvel paying this child to be the Superman of ice cream? It seems more like this is a Batman and Robin situation, where child labor is fine as long as it's superheroing. Or maybe it's okay because Billy doesn't remain a child for the entire comic book. One lick of his delicious chocolate carvel cone and…he becomes an adult man in a motorcycle helmet because being a superhero is dangerous, and Billy still has those soft spots on his skull.

If the art style of Captain Carvel and his Carvel Crusaders looks familiar to you, that's probably because it was produced by Archie Comics. So, any criticism regarding the Captain Carvel aesthetic should be tossed their way. I think for a comic book made to be covered in sticky little ice cream fingerprints, it looks pretty good.

Captain Carvel learns that his local Carvel store has missed a delivery, which is suddenly his problem. Instead of calling the warehouse and talking to Jim, he decides he needs to travel around the world in his ice cream spaceship (which they kept after the redesign) and check on all of the ingredients in Carvel ice cream. Hey, you know what would make this dangerous mission more fun? Loading up a bunch of children who don't have ice cream superpowers into their own flying motorcycles and dragging them along with him. Nobody else gets a helmet! Shout out to Christ The Redeemer, hopefully he can catch. Ted's going to do a barrel roll.

Every great hero needs a great villain, and who better to fight Captain Carvel than The Ice Cream Hater? When you first consider this villain choice, you might think the creators spent five seconds coming up with the name Ice Cream Hater, but when you consider the fact that all of the hideous ice cream monsters introduced in the previous book are Captain Carvel's friends, you realize how limited his villain options were. They can't have someone like Bonita-Banana Barge make a sudden villain turn, even though she is objectively horrifying.

My God, can Carvel pick a single ice cream character name that doesn't sound exactly like a '70s porn title? If they ever change Mamapalooza to Step-Mamapalooza, I'm going to get very suspicious.

The first thing we learn about Ice Cream Hater is that he understands the importance of branding. He's got his personal label on all of his products. As he goes around to each country and sabotages Carvel's supply of fresh ingredients, he leaves behind his logo, either to taunt Captain Carvel or maybe he's hoping one of the kids will decide to join his cause once they understand his platform.

For just a moment, when I saw that Ice Cream Hater wears a hood over his face, I wondered if this was going to be a Bizarro Superman situation. The universe requires balance. A man with so much love for Carvel Ice Cream cannot exist without creating a man who hates it with the same passion. I was giving this comic way too much credit.

The Carvel Crusaders tail Ice Cream Hater around the world and have a few close encounters before Captain Carvel is finally able to unmask him. It's a tense moment because it feels like he should be someone we've seen before if the comic is hiding his identity, but there are five characters in this comic, and only two have names: Billy who is also Captain Carvel, and Ted. The other children are never named. Yes, the girl and the black boy are not given names. Did I mention this was published in 1974?

Why does Ice Cream Hater fly around in an ice cream cone rocket? Why is he theming his evil around the things he hates? That's like if Catwoman couldn't stand cats or Penguin was just a cocaine leopard seal. Speaking of names, the girl without one manages to slap a tracer that looks like a Carvel ice cream sandwich onto Ice Cream Hater's ice cream rocket and they track him to Hawaii where he's after the pineapples! Captain Carvel is able to tackle Ice Cream Hater and unmask him, revealing…some friggin kid. The reveal is that Captain Carvel has been trying to beat up a child this entire time. Try to guess his evil ice cream origin story. Gross, no, Bonita-Banana Barge did not fuck his parent to death. It's way more evil:

It turns out that other children bullied him into hating ice cream because his name is I.C.E. Cream. His parents named him Ichabod Charles Earl Cream. Honestly, he has a valid complaint. Being named Ichabod alone would drive me to villainy. So, I guess Captain Carvel will just kick his ass, and that'll be the end of the comic.

The solution to the ice cream problem was ice cream! He hated ice cream enough to build a rocket ship about it, and he'd never even tried it. I guess, problem solved? Although I do worry that kid has more bullying coming his way after seeing how he eats ice cream. It looks like he's trying to swallow the whole cone in one bite. He looks like a Bonita-Banana Barge photo Captain Carvel saved on his phone.

That’s not the official end of the comic. Every Carvel comic has to end with a woman looking dead into the camera and reminding us all that ice cream is healthy. I guess you were still legally allowed to do that in 1974.

They follow up the main story with a few short pages about how ice cream is made, again! That's the third time they've explained it, and I guarantee you it hasn't had any effect on how badly the children want the ice cream. You might notice that the Ice Cream Hater is not in this panel. It looks like the children all saw the weird way he eats ice cream and decided not to invite him on any further Carvel trips. Or maybe Bonita-Banana Barge ate him. It was probably that.

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