The Full Form of SHAZAM is‍ Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles and Mercury.

SHAZAM! was first created in 1939 by Bill Parker and Ralph Daigh of Fawcett Comics. The idea stemmed from Parker’s vision of a team of six super heroes who were each gifted with a special power from a famous mythological figure. Daigh decided it would be better to combine all six powers into one super hero and the futureSHAZAM! was born.

The hero was the alter ego of 12-year-old orphan Billy Batson, who transformed into a crimefighter by saying the word “SHAZAM!,” which stands for the six mythological figures from whichSHAZAM! derives his power: Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles, and Mercury.SHAZAM! was all the rage for about a decade, selling tens of millions of issues throughout the 1940s. But at the same time, Fawcett Comics was also battling a copyright infringement lawsuit from the creators of Superman, who claimed thatSHAZAM! was too similar to the Man of Steel. That lawsuit combined with the post-World War II decline in sales caused Fawcett to shutter its comics division in 1953. That was basically the end of SHAZAM! until the mid-1970s when DC Comics purchased the rights to the character.

The new iteration was relaunched with the SHAZAM! comic series, with SHAZAM!’s 20-year absence, explained by the villain Doctor Thaddeus Sivana having releasedSHAZAM! from suspended animation. In addition to the solo comic series, SHAZAM! and his allies also made a few cameos in the Justice League comics of the late 1970s, and there is also a famous Limited Collectors’ Edition storyline called Superman vs.SHAZAM! where the two super heroes face off with their greatest foes—and each other. But it wasn’t until 1985 that the character was fully embraced by the DC Universe with the Crisis on Infinite Earths storyline. 

Over the next few years, SHAZAM! would share comic frames with Batman, Superman and the rest of the Justice League before finally getting his own comic series again in 1994 with The Power of SHAZAM!, which ran until 1999. After a couple of other early 2000s series, the SHAZAM! of today was finally formed during the 2011 New 52 relaunch of the DC Universe, when SHAZAM! was turned into a crimefighting team made up of Batson and five of his foster siblings — Freddy Freeman (JACK DYLAN GRAZER), Mary Batson (GRACE FULTON), Eugene Choi (IAN CHEN), Pedro Peña (JOVAN ARMAND) and Darla Dudley (FAITHE HERMAN) — all of whom are featured in the new movie. This team continued into the 2016 DC Rebirth, though the foster children were aged up a bit in 2016, which saw the foster siblings exploring the Seven Magic Realms and fighting the Monster Society of Evil.