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All-New Collectors' Edition Vol 1 C-58

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""Superman vs. Captain Marvel - When Earths Collide!"": Prologue:

I can take the full impact of a nuclear blast -- I've dived to the depths of a sun going nova -- I've battled creatures big enough to devour whole planets! And you try to smack with a brick mudball? WHAT A LAUGH!
— Superman, letting a brick wall break on his chest to show off.

All-New Collectors' Edition #C-58 is an issue of the series All-New Collectors' Edition (Volume 1) with a cover date of May, 1978.

Synopsis for "Superman vs. Captain Marvel - When Earths Collide!"

Prologue:

On the Planet Mars, a great structure still exists, the citadel of the mad Wizard Karmang the Evil, formerly a scientist named Karmang the Good. From the dark realms, he summons Black Adam and the Sand Superman, whom he calls a “Quarrmer.” Black Adam finds that he’s now regained his power and can remember his magic word, but when he tries to stand up to Karmang, he easily blasts him with a magical pink gas that fills him with unstoppable pain and orders him to bend the knee, which Black Adam does, weak and helpless to the pain, especially since Karmang says he’ll do it again if he disobeys him. Quarrmer decides he’ll follow his words without the threat of horrible pain and shows them a large viewscreen, depicting Earth-One and Earth-S, and says that they’ll each plant a device on each Earth to make them crash into each other through pure magical force and destroying them both!

Chapter One: Superman:

Superman finds a nondescript supervillain in a giant tripod saucer trying to tear the wall open from Metropolis Stadium during a Metros game as Lois Lane and ambitious sportscaster Steve Lombard tries to get footage of it with a camera. Lois has to point out to him that he should focus on the incoming Superman. Steve hopes he can to become an anchor at WGBS as Lois tells him to shut up and shoot the battle between Superman and the villain’s Multi-Machine. The angry villain ejects from his pod and uses a small rocket-tube to escape, complaining internally that no city is good for crime like him, only for Superman to grab the tube and drag him down to be arrested.

Soon after, Lois and Steve return to their corrupt boss, Mr. Morgan Edge, to show him the footage… only for Steve to find the film is gone. Morgan angrily tells him he’s an idiot, but firing him would be like cruelty to animals and Clark Kent arrives with the real film to hand it over. Steve is naturally jealous as Clark pretends he was watching from an alleyway, where he set up a camera at super-speed to do so before he smashed the saucer. Lois, as usual, is furious that he’s scooped her. When he goes to read the afternoon news, only to be interrupted by a gigantic hammering noise, so he changes into Superman and flies people out to safety before the building breaks down. Outside, he finds a certain World’s Mightiest Mortal smacking a girder in to the building and asks how he got here and what he’s doing. Instead of answering, Captain Marvel starts blindly attacking him, much to the confusion of the uninformed humans below. Superman realizes that something is wrong with Captain Marvel, so he uses some Super-Ventriloquism to summon Supergirl as long as he talks quietly.

Meanwhile, Linda Danvers is trying to make a veal marsala at New Athens Experimental School, where she is a student counselor, when she gets the message and flies off to help out as Supergirl! Superman manages to punch Captain Marvel to the ground, thinking he’s defeated him for now, but doesn’t know that he is feigning defeat… and isn’t Captain Marvel! “Captain Marvel” waits for him to get close and blasts him with a Judgment Ray that utilizes red-Sun rays to drive Superman to act completely irrational! “Captain Marvel” soon returns to his real form of Black Adam, knowing that this means Superman will be mad enough to attack Captain Marvel when he returns! His work done, Black Adam leaves to find solace in space, knowing Earth-One will be destroyed soon. Supergirl soon flies in and finds Superman is now unreasonably upset that “Captain Marvel” has tried to attack him and decides he must kill him! Supergirl is highly worried.

Interlude: Castle Karmang:

Karmang schemes that the machine Black Adam is planting on Earth-One will be like combining the two halves of an atomic bomb and using the energy of two shattered planets, he will “save” his race, only for the Martian ghosts of his brethren (the Undying Ones) to appear, seemingly the source of his ongoing madness. He shouts at them that he never wanted to destroy them, but he also really wanted to be immortal. 1,000,000 years ago, his society was one of science and discovery and Karmang was one of them. One of Karmang’s allies tells him to give up his mad quest for immortality, swearing it will destroy all Martian life, but Karmang refuses and activates a machine using sub-nuclear energy, killing 1,000,000,000 Martians, only for his immortality to be plagued by the shrieking ghosts of those he accidentally destroyed…

Chapter Two: SHAZAM!

Captain Marvel is in New York City where the Brooklyn Bridge is in danger and finds a huge crack in the base of it, which he has to hold together by hand. Above, on the bridge, Mary Batson calls SHAZAM herself to become Mary Marvel. She flies in to hold the crack while Captain Marvel grabs some junked cars, shoving them into the crack to strengthen it until a repair team can repair it entirely. Captain Marvel returns to being Billy Batson to go on a date with Cissie Sommerly at the Mid-Town Malt Market, but is distracted when he sees what looks like Superman outside and runs out to call SHAZAM and follows him to near the observation platform on the World Trade Center. The Quarrmer sets up the Control-Nodule that Karmang ordered him to, but thinks to himself how he doesn’t really want his planet destroyed, but he doesn’t have much of a way to inform either hero of the one weakness of Karmang’s plan: to destroy the machines themselves without attacking each other. He soon attacks Captain Marvel, saying he wants to duel to the death, blasting him with heat vision, breaking a wall to crush people below. Much the same as Black Adam, he manages to use the Judgment Ray on Captain Marvel, daring him to come to Earth-One to defeat him. A now-unreasonable Captain Marvel realizes the breadth of his powers makes him stronger than everyone and that he’s going to kill Superman!

Interlude: Castle Karmang:

Karmang recovers from an attack by the mad ghosts of Mars in his head, but decides that when he gets enough energy (from crashing two planets together,) that this will revive his dead Martian race. In two hours, the two engines he placed will adjust the magnetic fields of the two Earths, making them crash into each other and, further, if they’re dismantled before they do, it will ruin the magnetic field of both Earths, causing untold geothermic disasters the world over. He is happy to find that the Justice League of Earth-One are off in deep space and Captain Marvel, Jr., Ibis the Invincible and Bulletman are “suitably distracted” on Earth-S, but is alack to find Mary Marvel is following Captain Marvel across the dimensional gulf from a Metropolis donnyhbrook and dismisses she can do much. They hook off the Rock of Eternity to get to Earth-One and the two irrational super-heroes draw in close… for battle!

Chapter Three: Superman vs. Captain Marvel:

Mary Marvel is shocked to hear her brother and Superman shouting at each other like punks before Superman punches him into the WGBS Building, causing mayhem within, but Lois cajoles Steve to start up a news helicopter for them to catch this scoop. She worries that if Superman can’t stop Captain Marvel… he could destroy the world itself! Captain Marvel pitches a large piece of brick wall at him, but Superman takes it on the chest and blows him back with super-breath and Mary Marvel realizes that they’ve both gone mad and Supergirl confronts her. They reasonably talk things out and figure out that Black Adam was at work on Earth-One. Supergirl similarly recalls the Quarrmer, a being from another dimension that leaked on to Earth-One when all Kryptonite on Earth was destroyed and also absorbed some of Superman’s own life-force. Thus, the World’s Mightiest Girl and the Last Girl of Krypton team up to stop their irrespective villains (but also because Mary Marvel sure likes how Superman looks too…) The two heroes continue their fight over Niagara Falls as Lois points out the two could easily destroy the nearby Main East Coast Power Station, which ends up being the case, causing a huge blackout. Superman starts trying to unleash his heat vision on the World’ Mightiest Mortal…

Interlude: Castle Karmang:

Karmang watches with a newfound interest while Supergirl finds Black Adam sitting on the Pharaoh’s Throne in Egypt and fights her back with... the Ibistick! On Earth-S, Mary Marvel flies off to find the Quarrmer and soon finds a strange glow on Coney Island Beach as the Quarrmer soon reassembles himself to attack her. Black Adam, now wielding the might of the Prince of Egypt (as there is no Prince Ibis on Earth-One) and Supergirl uses her super-breath to suck the Ibistick out of his hand and wishes for the magic lightning to strike him, turning him into Teth-Adam once more and orders him to explain things. On Earth-S, Mary Marvel finds the Quarrmer doesn’t want to fight her and instead explains himself quickly…

Chapter Four: Superman vs. Captain Marvel — Round Two:

With an hour left, the Air Force are dispatched to try to stop Superman and Captain Marvel, who are now far off over the Grand Canyon. Their commander, Eagle Leader, is told to try shooting them down if they keep it up and soon does so… only for the heroes to punch their planes, letting the pilots parachute to safety. On Earth-One, Supergirl and Mary Marvel fly to Mars to find Karmang the Evil and find him enamored, staring at his screen and Supergirl offers that they use the Wizard Shazam to prolong the fight, then return to Castle Karmang… Meanwhile, Mr. Hardy, an oiler, finds that they’ve struck oil… only for the two fighting heroes to smash in, breaking over a derrick. Captain Marvel thinks about using his magic lightning to attack Superman, but Shazam appears to him and orders him to just keep fighting for now.

Interlude: Castle Karmang:

Supergirl and Mary Marvel fly into the Castle, only for Karmang to use a spell that lights Supergirl on fire, but he quickly finds Mary Marvel is invulnerable to magical attacks and throws his fireballs back at him. Back on Earth, Captain Marvel is punched over by Superman into the derrick. Superman is worried he’s killed the World’s Mightiest Mortal, but the spirit of Shazam appears to say that though he can recuperate as much as he is strong, being on Earth-One weakens him and says they’ve regained their senses in the pitch of battle and tells them to destroy the Space-Time Engines of Karmang. Superman wakes up Captain Marvel with some light heat vision to his face and then drags him off to get to work. Supergirl, now less on fire, decides to try to see if Karmang’s scientific machines can be used against him and looks around while he’s fighting Mary Marvel. Back on Earth-One, Steve and Lois report to Morgan Edge that they got great shots of the battle, but now the two heroes fly overhead and find the first Space-Time Engine, worrying that they can’t break the machines, so Superman decides to fly around the Earth to “shore up” the Earth’s magnetic field and he does so while Captain Marvel takes the ultimate risk and punches the first machine, destroying the one on Earth-S.

Denouement: Mars...:

Supergirl finds a big black button and pushes it, despite Karmang’s warnings it will drag them all into Limbo! She grabs Mary Marvel and flies off at super-speed as Karmang’s soul is dragged into Limbo forever…

Epilogue…:

Superman thanks Captain Marvel and Mary Marvel for their help and she casually flirts with him, having destroyed the Earth-S Space-Time Machine. The two girls try fawning after their irrespective partners’ relatives and they soon become embarrassed when they realize their age-differences. The four heroes walk off into the sunset together as Karmang, in Limbo, continues screaming for all eternity, surrounded by the ghosts of those he killed...

Appearing in "Superman vs. Captain Marvel - When Earths Collide!"

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Notes

Trivia

  • First published full-length meeting between Superman and Captain Marvel.
  • This issue reveals there is an Ibistick on Earth-One, but since Prince Amentep didn't seem to exist in it, it was buried with the non-specific Pharaoh who had used it beforehand.


See Also

Recommended Reading

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