We should not be surprised that the first character Carl Burgos created in decades turned out to be another blond-haired android in a red costume. After a brief return to the new Marvel Comics where his work no longer fit in with the house style, he was stewing over Marvel's current success with FF and already knew of Joe Simon's plan to bring suit against Goodman for Captain America. Burgos would attempt to mount a legal claim for the original Torch as well. This eventually resulted in Marvel inserting the original Torch as a guest-star in FF Annual #4. Meanwhile, someone at DC immediately freaked out when they saw PLASTIC MAN on the cover of CM #1. The near-instantaneous result of that was Plastic Man making an appearance as one of Robby Reed's "H-dial" heroes in HOUSE OF MYSTERY #160 (July '66), and Myron Fass' character being renamed Elastic Man in CM#2. One might wonder why DC didn't freak out earlier in 1963 when Israel Waldman issued his first reprint issue of PLASTIC MAN (#11), but presumably that flew under DC's radar since the IW/Super comics were sold bound together in plastic bags (like later Whitman comics), but in the lower-end department store chains. By December of 1966, PLASTIC MAN #1 was issued by DC. Meanwhile DC took a closer look at that "The Bat" villain in CM and decided that was TOO close to their main breadwinner in 1966, resulting in the villain's name being later changed to "The Ray" instead of The Bat. DC wasn't the only one put out by Myron Fass' CM comic, either. When Martin Goodman finally got wind of it, he immediately checked whether the character had been registered as a trademark, and when he found it hadn't, he called Stan Lee and ordered him to create a Captain Marvel character for Marvel Comics, so Goodman could get the trademark to it. It took a while for Stan to find a place for it to be published (since he didn't have much faith in this motive for creating comics), but eventually Marvel's Captain Marvel appeared in the December 1967 issue of MARVEL SUPER-HEROES (#17), which had just been converted from an all-reprint title into a SHOWCASE-style "try-out" title. Lots of interesting activity was generated off this brief attempt of Myron Fass' to cash in on the familiarity of the name of the famous Fawcett Comics Captain Marvel.
Link to the book:
Captain Marvel 1
