Mary, How You've Grown.

And one more thing:

When Mary Marvel debuted her black costume in Countdown, after receiving Black Adam's mystic powers, that was what Black Adam said. Certainly she didn't look particularly demure. And chunks of the blogosphere began to froth.

Okay fine, raping your childhood, despoiling pure innocent classic characters yadda yadda yadda.

But with the flap about this latest picture, now we're adding the fact that she's either a minor, or "barely legal".

But is she?

Oh, sure, in the original classic stories, and even when DC started making "Shazam" stories in the 70s, Mary Marvel looked pretty much the same normal or superpowered.

But as her brother shows, that doesn't have to be the case. He gets aged (well, he did before he got transmogrified and took old wizard Shazam's place), swapping between being a young lad and a strapping mature he-man. In fact, depending on who wrote the story, Billy Batson and Captain Marvel often seemed like two discrete individuals.

What was he? A little kid that inhabits a grown man's body? Or a separate individual who swaps places?

This raises the question: just what is Dark Mary Marvel? Adam said, "how you've grown," which would seem to imply that her form matured. Is she a teenager in both forms? A teenager who becomes grown? Two separate entities? How would you differentiate between minor Mary Marvel and adult Mary Marvel, anyway? Do you have to give her a huge bust just to show she's grown-up? She doesn't look particularly immature in the pic Alex Ross has painted. How do you tell, besides just assuming she's of some certain age? (As if pictures have ages, anyway.)

Here's a more interesting question: if drawn child porn is as reprehensible and evil as real child porn, does that not mean that the image is more important than the substance? That what appears in front of your eyes is what counts? Therefore, just to make it easy, take Billy Batson as an example. If Captain Marvel were to have a sexual experience, would it be statutory rape? Captain Marvel sure looks like an adult, but he may have the mind of a minor, so, what is that, exactly? And by extension, what is that with Mary Marvel?

It's a simple choice.

If adult Captain Marvel and/or adult Mary Marvel are taboo, sexually, then it is the inside, the heart and soul if you will, the mind, that counts. That, regardless if they have adult bodies, they are off-limits because of their minds.

If it is the exterior shell that counts, then it's the image, the exterior form, that matters. Captain Marvel is not off-limits, because he has a fully-grown adult body, and it is natural to view him in a sexual way if you like big buff guys like that. Same with Mary Marvel, if her body is that of an adult.

But here's the thing: If you think drawn child porn is bad and harmful, you are proposing that it's the image that matters there, too. If it looks like an underage person, that's what it is.

That is in direct opposition to a stance against the Mary Marvel picture, if your complaint is that she's underage: because she doesn't look underage, not in that picture.

So to anyone protesting this new Mary Marvel picture on the basis that Mary Marvel is underage: Just what is it you're objecting to? Because once you get down to the facts of the matter, it's kind of hard to tell...

Do you really even know, yourself?