Thanks, Captain Marvel.

Sunday afternoon nostalgia. I lived for this show on Saturday mornings. I caught a few episodes, by way of Tivo, that aired a few years back on TVLand, or something. They kind of don’t hold up. At all.

Flashback to 1979: My father never understood why they changed the comic book character name from “Uncle Dudley” to “Mentor.” (He was a giant Captain Marvel/Shazam! fan when he was a boy, as well, and knew the whole continuity, backwards and forwards. )Then some conspiracy theorist at a coffee shop told him that the entire show was some secret NAMBLA abomination, and that “mentor” was a code word known to their shadowy ranks and signified the elder in one of their iccky arrangements.

I remember that he didn’t believe it, per se, since that seems like bad marketing for CBS TV and DC comics to hatch a secret plot to initiate pre-teen boys into the ways of love with older men.

I also remember it sparked an uncomfortable conversation, when I caught wind of the topic when I asked “What’s a nambla?”