Long before the jumpsuits and the bright stage lights, Elvis Presley was a boy with a stack of comic books and a cousin who loved them every bit as much as he did.
That cousin was Harold Loyd. Harold was Elvis’s first cousin, the son of Rhetha, who was the sister of Elvis’s mother, Gladys. In 1992 Harold sat down with Jack Dennis of the San Antonio Headlines Examiner and talked about the two of them as boys. Elvis Australia reposted that interview on Oct 9, 2024.
“You see Elvis and I loved comic books, and we would trade or swap out our comics with each other all the time.”
It’s an easy scene to see. Two cousins on the floor, haggling over who gets which worn issue next.
But Elvis didn’t love every hero the same. He had a favorite, and it wasn’t Superman.
Years later he said as much himself. On Jan 16, 1971, Elvis accepted the Jaycees’ Ten Outstanding Young Men of the Nation award in Memphis. Standing in front of that crowd, he went back to his childhood: “When I was a kid, I read comic books and I was the hero of the comic book.” Here’s the speech from that night in his own voice, and it’s worth hearing how a grown Elvis talks about the boy he used to be.
Elvis gives his Jaycees award speech in Memphis, January 1971
So which hero was it?
Elvis biographer Elaine Dundy wrote that his favorite was Captain Marvel Jr. Writer Pamela Clarke Keogh wrote that around age 12, Elvis “discovered Captain Marvel Jr.”
If the name rings a faint bell, there’s a reason. Captain Marvel Jr. is the alter ego of Freddy Freeman, a boy who was saved by Captain Marvel and ended up sharing his powers. His comics ran from 1942 to 1953. Today the character is part of the “Shazam!” family owned by DC, and Freddy Freeman is in the 2019 and 2023 “Shazam!” movies. The teenage superhero your grandkids may have watched at the theater was young Elvis’s favorite.
Here’s where it gets fun. Billy Smith was another of Elvis’s cousins, the son of Gladys’s brother Travis, and he lived at Graceland. Billy didn’t think the comic stayed on the shelf when Elvis grew up.
“That’s where he got the idea for the capes. From the comic books,” his cousin Billy Smith said.
He went a step further, too: “If you go back and look at a drawing of Captain Marvel Jr., it looks a whole lot like the seventies Elvis”
Biographer Elaine Dundy wrote nearly the same thing: “Elvis’ favorite was Captain Marvel Jr., who looks, in fact, exactly like Elvis made himself look”
So hold Billy’s words in your head and watch Elvis on stage in Honolulu in 1973, then decide for yourself how close the seventies Elvis came to that drawing.
Elvis sings “Burning Love” live in Honolulu in 1973
To be fair, nobody ever made it official. Elvis never confirmed that the comic was where the capes came from. Neither did Bill Belew, his stage designer. But as the Deseret News pointed out, neither man ever denied it.
That leaves the cousins. Harold remembered the trading. Billy, who lived at Graceland, put the old drawings next to the seventies Elvis, and to him the match was hard to miss.