When her friends and family asked Pam to recount the details of that date later—even when Penny pressed her for details at their sisters-only lunch that weekend—she was never able to do it to their or her own satisfaction. She remembered feelings, colors, impressions—she could and did paint a marvelous picture of the date in the style of Monet (specifically: none of that Renoir bullshit)—but she couldn’t describe the events in a proper narrative style. The one exchange she could recount, word for word, didn’t speak to anyone but her, Jim, and her dad, but that wasn’t her problem, she decided. It was everyone else who didn’t manage to understand.

It all started when Jim was doing…something…with the candle in the middle of the table, which had gone out. Whatever it was he’d been trying hadn’t been working, and she remembered giggling helplessly at him as he made a face at her. He closed his eyes and meditated for a moment, which of course only made her laugh harder, then out of nowhere yelled “Shazam!” pointed a finger, and the candle burst into light.

She never got him to admit how he’d done that.

“Shazam? Really?” She stuck out her tongue at him.

“What? Captain Marvel’s the best.” He picked up a slice of pizza and folded it in half. “Better’n Superman,” he murmured as he munched.

She scoffed. “Of course Captain Marvel’s the best.” She grabbed her own slice of pizza and transferred it to her plate. “But she doesn’t say ‘Shazam.’ Only two-bit superheroes need catchphrases.”

“Wait a minute. What about ‘Hulk smash’? And Billy Batson…”

“Billy Batson is a fourteen-year-old kid. He couldn’t hold a candle to Monica Rambeau.” She took a deliberate bite out of the pizza and swallowed while Jim was still goggling at her. “And the Hulk is a perfect example! Bruce Banner doesn’t need a catchphrase. Only his less intelligent alter ego does.”

Jim finally found his voice. “Monica Rambeau? Who’s that?”

She rolled her eyes. “Try to keep up. She’s Captain Marvel. A seriously superior Captain Marvel, if you ask me. DC should stop trying to imitate the genuine article. ‘Shazam?’ Really.”

“Excuse me, but…”

“Now, I’ll admit that she goes by Photon now, or is it Pulsar, but both of those are way cooler than Shazam. And the original Mar-Vell and his relatives are cooler than some kid on the streets.”

“Hey, that’s what makes Captain Marvel cool. He’s like…the superhero you’d make up if you were a fourteen year old boy, but it actually works!”

“Jim, Jim, Jim.” She shook her head sadly and took another slice. “Some of us were never a fourteen year old boy.”

“I guess not.” He finished his slice slowly and then grinned. “And some of us are kind of glad of that. Truce?”

“Truce.” She held out a hand and then pulled it back. “But only if you’ll agree that Monica Rambeau is the best Captain Marvel.”

“How can I agree to that if I haven’t read any of her stuff?”

“Well, I do happen to have the trades back in my apartment…” Her dad had let her take them when she’d moved into her own place, suggesting that she might use them to fill the time. This was, she reflected, probably not what he’d expected to mean by that, but she wasn’t complaining.

The rest of the meal went extremely quickly. And when Pam woke up the next morning to find Jim Halpert busily reading Marvel Comics in her living room, half-dressed, she knew she’d made the right decision. Not that she’d really had any doubts, but Roy had never so much as cracked the cover of a single issue—much less (as far as she could tell from the pile next to Jim) bulldozed their way through The Amazing Spiderman Annual #16, the early run of Captain Marvel, and a third of Avengers Unplugged.

“I see. This was all a ploy to get your hands on my comic book collection.” She lounged in the doorway taking in the sight of Jim in his boxers reading her favorite books.

“Guilty as charged.” He sprang up, carefully marking his place in the book and then striding over to give her a kiss. “This whole thing—from that first phone call to dinner last night at Cugino’s—was all a setup to have a chance to read twenty-year-old Marvel comics.” He grinned. “These are actually pretty good, though.”

“I know.”

“Yeah, yeah, you’re the expert. Say, do you think Monica could take the Fantastic Four single-handedly, or would she need Spider-Man’s help? Assuming, as I think we should, that we’re into hero-vs-hero shenanigans.”

The rest of the morning passed in debating this and other important topics—and this time, unlike his first day, they both ended up calling in to tell Michael they were working on the University of Scranton account. After all, Pam pointed out, it had been her idea in the first place—and clearly Jim needed extensive further guidance. In person.