Recognize that kid on the right? It’s Jackie Earle Haley, who would play one of the Bad News Bears a couple of years later. Much, much later on, he’d make the rare transition from child star to grownup actor. He was Rorshach in the Watchmen movie, Freddie in a Nightmare on Elm Street remake, and he currently appears in the Preacher TV series. Well, maybe “grownup” isn’t quite the right word.
Daniel really liked this episode because, speaking of bears, a big brown bear shows up in this episode and Captain Marvel needs to chase it away. That’s pretty much it for the excitement this time out. Captain Marvel lands… and the bear walks away. My son was happy because bears are cool, and I suppose it would be asking a bit much, even with the surprising stunts this show pulled, to expect any kind of stuntman-bear wrestling.
For a few years in the 1990s, incidentally, this was the only episode of Shazam! to make its way around any of the VHS tape trading circles in which I moved. Others eventually joined it, mainly from the John Davey run, but for a while, this was most people’s only exposure to the show. Sadly, it’s easily among the weakest of the first twelve, without even a neat stunt, camera trick, or cool car to set it apart, and set the tone for all the mocking my friends and I ladled out.
Fire Breathing Dimetrodon Time 