Captain Marvel Adventures (Volume 1) with a cover date of April, 1946.
Synopsis for "Sivana Strikes Again"
Sivana invents the Glad Hand, a device that makes anyone he shakes hands with while wearing it completely friendly. He has his chance to demonstrate when a henchman, disgruntled over not being paid, breaks into the lab and starts shooting, but is completely pacified when Sivana shakes his hand with the device. Captain Marvel finds out about the effects of Sivana's new invention, but remains suspicious. Rightly so, as Sivana's next move is to invite all the gang bosses in town to a party where he pacifies them with his gadget, and has them sign over control of their rackets to him. Captain Marvel crashes the party and sends Sivana running.
Appearing in "Sivana Strikes Again"
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Locations:
Items:
- Glad Hand
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Synopsis for "Sivana's Viewpoint"
Sivana's found in the trash can he'd used to hide from Marvel by some kids, and to keep them from calling the cops, he tries to convince them he's an innocent victim whose reputation's been smeared by that big red bully, Captain Marvel. The hero shows up and quickly convinces them Sivana was lying, then pursues the scientist. Marvel changes back to Billy to stealthfully climb through a window into Sivana's lab, but this leaves him vulnerable to Sivana's Glad Hand. Friendly with the scientist now, Billy's all too happy to accept Sivana's offer to be an ambassador to the people of the planet Venus. To make him perfect for the job, Sivana puts him into a machine that makes Billy fluent in the Venusian language. However, it leaves him incapable of speaking anything but, and thus unable to say his magic word anymore. With his enemy out of the way, Sivana begins his campaign to conquer the world.
Appearing in "Sivana's Viewpoint"
- Appearances not yet listed
Synopsis for "King Sivana Rules Earth"
Sivana unleashes a giant ray based on his Glad Hand that makes everyone in the world docile but him, so he has no trouble just marching in and declaring himself king of the world. Meanwhile, back on Venus, Billy and Beautia are attacked by a giant lizard, but she's able to get him to say "Shazam". Transformed once again, Marvel easily fends off the beast, and Beautia reverses the process that left Cap and Billy unable to speak anything but the alien language. Cap then wrecks the "peace ray" and easily flies to Earth and arrests Sivana again.
Appearing in "King Sivana Rules Earth"
- Appearances not yet listed
Synopsis for "Nature Goes Wild"
Billy goes on a bicycle trip in the country to unwind, but is perplexed when it starts to rain. Red rain. An old man in the next town complains it's been raining snail shells, even. Billy goes into the first house he finds to get out of the rain, and hears someone laughing on the roof. This proves to be a strange fellow named Ebenezer Geezer, who predicts the town hall will fly away soon. After setting the buidling back where it belongs, Captain Marvel tries to get some answers out of Geezer, who denies any knowledge of what happened and introduces Cap to the work of Charles Fort and his theories about bizarre occurences that defy science. Geezer also very obviously steers Marvel away from a specific door in his house when showing the hero out.
Strange things keep happening at a rapid pace, like grass growing so tall cars can't see each other coming through it, rabbits turning killer, and trees getting up and crashing into buildings. Cap flies back to Geezer's house, where the man admits he built a machine to make nature run wild based on Fort's theories. He forgets he set up an earthquake to occur that wrecks his house and the machine with it. When Geezer goes into town to do the right thing and apologize, it literally starts raining cats and dogs, leaving Billy and Geezer wondering if everything was the doing of Geezer's machine, or Fort's theories in action.
Appearing in "Nature Goes Wild"
- Appearances not yet listed
Synopsis for "King of the Apes"
Billy Batson's on a plane flying over an uninhabited island when he sees the world HELP scrawled on its beach. He jumps out and transforms to Captain Marvel, who flies down and is greeted by a talking ape, Dr. Bongo. He's a member of an entire town of largely-civilized, talking apes, who have buildings, businesses, and even crime, as Cap learns when he stops one ape from stealing an armload of fruit. Long ago, it seems, an explorer settled on the island and managed to teach the apes many of the ways of man.
The problem they need help with is a group of pirates that routinely raids the town and captures its inhabitants. Captain Marvel easily drives them off, but the leader, Captain Blye, sets a hut aflame to divert him. While the ape fire department contains the blaze, Marvel flies to the pirates' boat, where they offer to cut him in on their deal to sell the intelligent apes to circus owners. He beats up the pirates and returns the apes home. They try to make Marvel their king, but he declines and flies back to civilization.
Appearing in "King of the Apes"
- Appearances not yet listed
See Also