It is said that C.C. Beck HATED how DC treated Captain Marvel upon its resurrection... that they simplified the character and stories down to young children's level. I remember those stories... and I can't argue that too hard. That ended up with "Shazam!" becoming a reprint title for a while (X-Men, anyone?)

Came the Crisis, and after that, Shazam was psychotic due to pre-Crisis memories, and... oh, that's all I remember of that ludicrous four-part mini. Meanwhile, in Justice League, Captain Marvel was treated.like a nine year old. "Gosh, Mr. Gardner, I'm not really made of white bread."

Jerry Ordway's series gave it a good try to re-establish Cap - but it veered a little too far from the original story. In a variety of stories, artists couldn't decide what outfit he should wear. Giffen and DeMatteis got their hands on Mary Marvel (or "Captain Marvel", according to Mr. Ordway) in a couple of stupidly silly Justice League mini-series.

Since then, Captain Marvel seems to have been mauled and mangled. I say "seems" because I didn't read many Pu-52 stories, so I don't know about the kiddie Captain Marvel, or the new Monster Society, or when DC finally gave up on "Captain Marvel" and now calls him "Shazam." In a hoodie. 

I'm an old crank and FAR too old a fanboy, as Mr. Byrne would recognize... but I rather wish that somebody could just go back to the original concept and simply make Captain Marvel a character in super hero stories again as he was originally intended.

Didn't work, it seems. And I hated it too. Notably, we haven't seen him since "Rebirth" began. He hasn't even been mentioned.

If it was up to me, I'd establish that the Earth-Zero versions of Billy, Mary, Freddie Freeman, et al have all lost their powers, permanently. And then we'd never see them again. All future Marvel Family stories would take place on Earth-5, where they very closely resemble their original selves, and that would be that. 

Even without Beck, the 'old fashioned look' continued, under Kurt Schaffenberger. Only in the last issue of that series, when Don Newton took over, did CM finally look like a '1978' character. From then on, the series ran in WORLD'S FINEST, written by E. Nelson Bridwell, until 1982. I consider that to be 'my' Captain Marvel. 

The 'de-aging' of Cap seems to have crept through the 1980s. Roy Thomas did a DC COMICS PRESENTS two-parter(in ine of his first DC assignments), in which CM and Superman traded quips in that 'casual, slangly, overly colloquial' conversational style that Thomas gave to every '20th century' character he ever wrote(not be confused with the 'purple prose' of every villain, 'past' or 'future' character he ever wrote.)

Maybe subsequent writers took RT's'voice' of CM to be a suggestion on how to write him going forward...and the idea that there would be no more 'Golden Age Marvels' after CRISIS made it 'acceptable' for there to be an entirely new, different...and, ultimately, goofy, corny, flaky, and mentally challenged...Captain Marvel.