I have to go now, son! I have a wonderful nasty scheme to use against Captain Marvel! See that you invent something horrible to use against Capt. Marvel, Jr.! Goodbye! 
Captain Marvel, Jr. #42 is an issue of the series Captain Marvel, Jr. (Volume 1) with a cover date of September, 1946.
Synopsis for Capt. Marvel, Jr.: "Capt. Marvel, Jr. and the Mysterious Axioms!"
Mr. Kleever, a criminologist, tells his colleague Dr. Sheldon that despite all theories there is such thing as a perfect crime, something he brings up at criminologist meetings too often. To himself, he thinks that the key to the perfect crime is having no motive whatsoever. Thus, he decides to open a Book of Axioms to find random inspiration and opportunities to kill people. He starts with “Look before you leap,” so he sneaks into a circus in town and sabotages the trapeze act. Later, the trapeze artist, with no net below him, falls and Freddy Freeman is brave enough to leap out of the crowd while ripping his pants and calls CAPTAIN MARVEL to become Captain Marvel, Jr. and catch him. When he asks Bernardo the trapeze artist who would want to kill him, they only find a note with the axiom. No one else in the circus has any idea why anyone would want to hurt Bernardo either. He soon tries his next axiom “A stitch in time saves nine” and breaks into J. Jack’s Tailor and blackjacks him, leaving the axiom on his sewing machine that will stab him in a vein, killing him. However, Freddy heads in there to get his pants fixed and calls CAPTAIN MARVEL when he sees him trying to kill someone and shoves his hand into the path of the needle as Captain Marvel, Jr. The tailor is mystified as to who would attack him and why. Kleever next goes for “Don’t cry over spilled milk” and drops a milk-crate full of milk bottles on the head of a milkman from a roof, but Junior flies in just in time to punch it out of the way of killing him and finds the axiom tacks to his milk cart. The milkman doesn’t know Jackson the Tailor or the Great Bernardo. Junior decides to visit Dr. Sheldon about these strange crimes. Meanwhile, Kleever is inspired by “Speech is silver, silence is golden” to kill Dr. Sheldon himself! He stabs the axiom on to a knife and throws it at Dr. Sheldon and flings it at him through a window. Freddy sees it and calls CAPTAIN MARVEL to become Captain Marvel, Jr., revealing his secret identity to Dr. Sheldon and, unknowingly, to Mr. Kleever as well. Naturally, he’s unrelated to the other attacks and he notes that a crime without a motive sounds like what Mr. Kleever won’t stop talking about, so he calls CAPTAIN MARVEL to return Freddy to look around for him, only for Kleever to blackjack him when he leaves the house. He ties Freddy’s wrist to his car to enact “The best of friends must part” and ties his legs to a tree, but Freddy’s gag slips when he gets a face full of exhaust. Junior flies after him and is too busy looking in his rear-view mirror to not notice the bridge out ahead, crashing and dying. Junior notes that he forgot one axiom: “Crime doesn’t pay!” and goes to tell the police what happened. Later, Freddy writes in his diary how this only really proved Dr. Sheldon was right that there is no perfect crime and that trying to commit crimes without motives on purpose is in and of itself, a motive.
Appearing in Capt. Marvel, Jr.: "Capt. Marvel, Jr. and the Mysterious Axioms!"
Featured Characters:
Supporting Characters:
- Dr. Sheldon
Antagonists:
- Mr. Kleever, Criminologist
Other Characters:
- The Great Bernardo
- Jackson the Tailor
- A Milk Deliveryman
Locations:
- Earth-S
- New York City
- J. Jack's Tailor
- New York City
Items:
- Book of Axioms
Vehicles:
Synopsis for Capt. Marvel, Jr.: "Sivana, Jr. Strikes Again!"
Freddy Freeman is pleased to find the headline of the Daily Globe is that Sivana, Jr. is still in reform school and nothing has changed. One of his patrons asks if he thinks that Sivana, Jr. will break out soon, but Freddy thinks he’s not quite as evil as his father, who is infamous for escaping from prison. Sivana, Jr. complains in his cell at reform school, not knowing his father’s secret to escapes, only for Dr. Sivana to leap in through the wall to tell Sivana, Jr. his secret of how to “squeeze past the atoms” of any solid substance by stating the scientific formula for it (he’s used it 743 times by now), spanks his son for disgracing the “proud” name of the Sivana Family, but then gives him a new lab and promptly leaves to do crime.
Sivana, Jr. soon creates a mechanical dog he names Fido who he takes out. He soon eats a lady’s bulldog named Rex and then a lamp post, grinding it into atoms. Fido soon helps him rob an armored truck by eating the bullets from guards, eats their guns and then eats through the truck too. Freddy hears about it all from a fleeing policeman and calls CAPTAIN MARVEL and becomes Junior again as Sivana, Jr. finds that Fido is problematically also eating the money. Sivana, Jr. takes a knock to the jaw, but still insists he’s going to be the World’s Most Important Boy. Fido attacks the World’s Mightiest Boy and his teeth break immediately and Junior punches them both into a building and off the wall, so Sivana, Jr. uses Fido to tunnel away into a subway so they can escape. Soon enough, Fido just lunges at Freddy from the ground under his Newsstand, but starts eating his papers instead of Freddy. Sivana, Jr. tries to shove Freddy bodily into Fido’s mouth, but he manages to call CAPTAIN MARVEL and become Captain Marvel, Jr. Sivana, Jr. believes him destroyed, but instead he starts to attack Sivana, Jr. himself, tearing through a triple-plate steel door to get to him before Junior just breaks out of it and reveals that he was just flying it around himself until he broke it. He finds a letter from Sivana, Jr., saying he escaped via a 4th-Dimensional Door and that they’ll surely meet again. Later, Freddy is peddling papers as he says that he’ll keep stopping Sivana, Jr. just like Captain Marvel fights his father.
Appearing in Capt. Marvel, Jr.: "Sivana, Jr. Strikes Again!"
Featured Characters:
Supporting Characters:
Antagonists:
- Sivana, Jr.
- Fido (Destroyed)
- Doctor Sivana
Other Characters:
Locations:
Items:
- Sivana, Jr.'s 4th-Dimensional Door (Mentioned only)
Vehicles:
Synopsis for Capt. Marvel, Jr.: "The Amazing Zugqumps"
Appearing in Capt. Marvel, Jr.: "The Amazing Zugqumps"
Featured Characters:
Supporting Characters:
Antagonists:
Other Characters:
Locations:
Items:
Vehicles:
Synopsis for Capt. Marvel, Jr.: "Seven Years of Hard Luck"
It’s Friday the 13th and Freddy is meeting “Lucky” Charley, who says “Knock on wood” obsessively due to his superstitious ways. Freddy tries to disprove this by walking under a ladder, but when he does, he’s hit by a can of paint on the head. Freddy tries it again, letting a black cat cross his path, only to rouse the anger of the Spirit of Superstition, a being that causes bad luck and lives in a cloud. He blows his newsstand’s papers all over and Freddy calls CAPTAIN MARVEL to try to stop it as Captain Marvel, Jr., but finds his newsstand essentially destroyed and Charley says it was his fault. Freddy breaks a mirror to prove him wrong, so the Spirit of Superstition blasts him with The Works, starting a trash-can fire near him that starts to spread to the city. Freddy calls CAPTAIN MARVEL and becomes Junior again, but he finds the flames seem to go faster than he can move. When he gets too close to the Spirit of Superstition, it cracks up the cloud to rain on him and mocks him for trying to stop him, entering a door into another cloud. Junior soon enters the Chamber of the Spirit of Superstition doesn’t have a tangible form, hits him with a rabbit’s foot and then sits down in a giant throne, finding that they’re not able to really harm one another. He shows he’s able to just summon magic lightning, turning him back into Freddy, then knocks him out with a giant horseshoe he knocks him in the head with. He dumps him into a giant test tube, inside which are every broken mirror and stoppers it with a giant cork, preventing Freddy from calling CAPTAIN MARVEL. Freddy falls and falls and calls CAPTAIN MARVEL to no avail. When he strikes the mirror shards though… he suddenly wakes up, all of it having been a hallucination he had when he was struck in the head with a mostly-full can of paint. He finds that his newsstand is fine, but that he did break Charley’s mirror. Freddy admits that he now thinks it sure is bad luck to walk under a ladder… if there’s a pail on it!
Appearing in Capt. Marvel, Jr.: "Seven Years of Hard Luck"
Featured Characters:
Supporting Characters:
- "Lucky" Charley
Antagonists:
- The Spirit of Superstition (In dream sequence only)
Other Characters:
Locations:
- Earth-S
- New York City
- The Chamber of the Spirit of Superstition (In dream sequence only)
Items:
Vehicles:
Trivia
- This issue marks the first use of Sivana, Jr. receiving superpowers by gaining the same intangibility formula as his father.
- Mr. Kleever's obsession with "axioms" would come 18 years before [[Green_Lantern_Vol_2_29
Black Hand's first appearance]] and his obsession with "clichés."
See Also
Links and References
