S 9 shall be my successor. Merely by speaking my name, you can become the strongest and mightiest man in the world -- Captain Marvel!"28 In the spirit of Captain Marvel, the word shazam connotes something coming to fruition or maturation: "Shazam, I'm a man. If not a man, at least a tall boy. Would you accept an enormous child?"29 "Shazzam" is the name of professional magician Blair Marshall's revue. In the film Bringing Down the House (200 ), when Eugene Levy sees Queen Latifah descending a staircase the only word he can utter is shazzam. "Shazam" is the television character Gomer Pyle's favorite cry at anything out of the ordinary. 0 In a Monty Python's Flying Circus comedy sketch, "Mrs. Shazam" is a character who doesn't realize that "exploding is a perfectly normal medical phenomenon." 1 Talk show host Oprah Winfrey claims she yells shazam! when she is angry. Common Magician's Applications: Any act of conjuring. Variations and Incantations: • Acka shazam -- Justin Martin, 150 Totally Terrific Writing Prompts (1999) • Alley shazam "Look! Magic! Alley shazam!" -- Nevada Barr, Track of the Cat (199 ) • Mazam -- Loris Bree, Kids' Magic Secrets (200 ) • Shazaam -- Kathleen Eagle, The Last Good Man (2000) • Shazaam alakazaam, abracadabra, hocus-pocus -- Bruce Olds, Bucking the Tiger (2001) • Shazoom -- Terry Pratchett, "Imaginary Worlds, Real Stories," Folklore (2000) • Shazzam -- Martin Hegwood, The Green-Eyed Hurricane (2000) In Literature: • "Revolution reminded him of 'Shazzam,' a magical word." -- Alan Lelchuk, Brooklyn Boy (1990) 28 John Clute, The Encyclopedia of Fantasy (1997) 29 Neil Simon, quoted in Neil Simon: A Casebook by Gary Konas (1997) 0 Brendon Lemon, Last Night (2002) 1 Graham Chapman, The Complete Monty Python's Flying Circus: All the Words (1989) 2 James V. O'Connor, Cuss Control (2000)