This is an in-universe article with out-of-universe material.
The Marvel Family #37 is an issue of the series The Marvel Family (Volume 1) with a cover date of July, 1949.
Synopsis for The Marvel Family: "The Marvel Family Battles the Earth Changer!"
A skipper and helmsman in the South Seas find that an island they are looking for seems to be… moving and that tons of islands are swarming in around them! Two uninhabited islands soon crash into each other, forcing them to maneuver around it. Back at Station WHIZ, Billy gets a teletype about the crashing islands and calls SHAZAM while Mary Batson & Freddy Freeman also call SHAZAM & CAPTAIN MARVEL to become the Marvel Family. They fly out to stop the same ship from being crushed between two crashing islands and Mary Marvel and Captain Marvel, Junior are able to hold them apart until they seem to settle. Talking with the Skipper, Captain Marvel finds out where these islands are supposed to be and he and the others just push them back into place by pure physical force. Meanwhile, in low-Earth orbit, mad scientist Abigail Archibald uses her Moon Drag Focuser to make islands move around the Earth, but that this was only a test of its power, reasoning she can also move continents using a large machine that focuses the powers of the tides that can generally shift the crust over the mantle of the Earth itself. We are asked to wonder why she's doing this and we're then directly shown that she had an “intense feminine desire to move things around” which she has done since childhood, fusses about organization and keeps arranging things however she feels like, much to the chagrin of her laboratory partners. They mock how she'd likely want to change the whole world around them and she is inspired to alter the continents to all fit together into a new Pangaea.
Back in the present, she starts moving Australia, causing a devastating earthquake that tears several floors off the top of a skyscraper and opens chasms that intersect with oncoming traffic, forcing the Marvel Family to begin damage control. They figure out that they need to physically stop all of Australia, pushing it back into place as well. Abigail is furious and goes to a panel of buttons to sob loudly to herself. She decides she will just fling the entire Marvel Family into the depths of space, managing to throw them a billion miles away, making Captain Marvel realize that the concentrated force of the Moon's gravity is at play. Arriving back at Earth soon, they find Abigail's space station and Captain Marvel, as usual, is balked to harm a woman. She tells him that she intends to make the Earth “better” by making Antarctica and Africa a lot more colonized with temperate climates. Captain Marvel rightly points out this will kill millions and cause untold destruction and Abigail weakly strikes him with a broom. Captain Marvel goes to find Mary Marvel to solve this problem for him.
Back on Earth, Mary Marvel is trying to stop a surprisingly diverse group of animals stampeding towards a village. She manages to split them to go around the village, planning to gather them up thereabouts to push them back into the wilds. In Antarctica, Captain Marvel, Jr. finds that the movement of a polar ice cap into warm Pacific waters will melt it, creating untold flooding across the world. Captain Marvel soon retrieves Mary Marvel and flies her to Abigail's space station as she starts to madly threaten that she'll just destroy all of America, then offers that she'll just turn it all the way up to destroy the entire planet, only for Mary Marvel to dash in and violently slap her from the controls, noting that she had to because of her madness. Captain Marvel & Junior disassemble her space station while Mary Marvel flies her to an asylum. Later, the kids are happy that the continents aren't moving anymore and Abigail is still obsessively moving a rocking chair around her padded cell.
Appearing in The Marvel Family: "The Marvel Family Battles the Earth Changer!"
Featured Characters:
Supporting Characters:
Antagonists:
- Abigail Archibald
Other Characters:
- A Skipper
- A Helmsman
- Several African Animals
Locations:
Items:
- The Moon Drag Focuser (Destroyed)
Vehicles:
- Abigail Archibald's Space Station (Destroyed)
Synopsis for Capt. Marvel, Jr.: "Capt. Marvel, Jr. and the Man with the Whirling Eyes!"
A man wearing a dark suit, cape and top hat with white gloves comes to Mrs. Wagner's boarding house and announces himself as Count Peril Ize and he wants to see Freddy Freeman, despite it being the middle of the night. She points out as much, but he insists, using some kind of hypnotism to compel her to take him to him. Doing so, he shines a flashlight in Freddy's face while he's asleep and then we find he looks like a vampire with a Van Dyke and giant hypnotic swirls for eyes. Freddy recognizes this as a common sign of hypnosis, but counters smartly that “no hypnotist can make an honest person do a dishonest deed.” Despite this, Count Ize instead gives him the nonspecific command of doing what he tells him and then to go back to sleep. The next morning, Freddy is mildly worried when he wakes up and calls CAPTAIN MARVEL so Captain Marvel, Jr. can investigate this for him. He finds that Count Ize left footprints leading outside, but they are gone from outside itself. He decides to return to being Freddy to remember better and he goes to work as well, hoping he'll figure it out. By noon, he's sold out for the day and suddenly heads to a ship in the harbor, the Argus where Count Peril Ize is. Doing so, he compels the young man to take a box from his sailor goon and then gives him further instruction off-panel. The sailor asks him why he's involved Freddy in this and Count Ize says that it's because no one will suspect him or refuse him. Freddy takes the package and sells a Wonder Window Cleaner to an old woman, then to several other houses, thinking that he's just sold some window cleaner with a profit of a dime commission per bottle. We soon find that this is indeed a scam as the sailor climbs in to the houses he met since this Wonder Window Cleaner actually dissolves windows and is secretly some kind of powerful acid.
Freddy reads about it in the Evening Star and remembers everything that happened while he was in a trance. He calls CAPTAIN MARVEL and Captain Marvel Junior flies off to find where the man with such large footprints went to, searching throughout town. He soon finds the Argus is at sea and the World's Mightiest Boy lays into Count Peril Ize's goons, punching three out with a single punch, standing behind the other. Count Peril Ize uses his hypnotism on Junior, which seems to work, paralyzing him so he can tell him how he's due to frame Freddy for selling the acid to women in town and orders his men to throw him into the water for the sharks. His men run in, only for Junior to reveal the hypnosis didn't work on him and punches out the three goons at once again and Count Peril Ize is punched in the jaw with his other hand, revealing he just played it up to hear his crimes. Later, he notes that Freddy is clear and Count Peril Ize has two black eyes, so he can't just hypnotize a jailer!
Appearing in Capt. Marvel, Jr.: "Capt. Marvel, Jr. and the Man with the Whirling Eyes!"
Featured Characters:
Supporting Characters:
Antagonists:
- Count Peril Ize
- An Unscrupulous Sailor
Other Characters:
- Mrs. Wagner
Locations:
- Earth-S
- New York City
- Mrs. Wagner's Boarding House
- New York City
Items:
- The "Wonder Window Cleaner" Acid
- The Evening Star
Vehicles:
- The Argus
Synopsis for Mary Marvel: "Mary Marvel and The Sinister Sleep"
A thug in a blue suit sits on a park bench, bemoaning how he can't sleep at night. A wandering scientist with a mustache, Dr. Zandmann, appears to offer him a test of his new “Sleep Sand” that will cure insomnia forever. Pouring a handful in his face, the thug passes out immediately and sleeps for an entire 24 hours. When the thug awakens, he finds that Dr. Zandmann made enough for the whole city to sell, but the thug slaps a handful of the Sleep Sand into his face to knock him out for a day and begins a lucrative criminal career as “Wideawake” Willy, then uses a prop plane to spread the sand all over town. Soon, everyone falls asleep and he loots a jewelry store. We flash back to earlier when everyone was falling asleep to find that Mary Batson was there and quickly called SHAZAM so that Mary Marvel would stay awake. Mary Marvel soon runs directly into the absconding criminal around a corner and he immediately cops to all charges, but reveals that a fire broke out while she challenged him, meaning that she'll need to stop it to catch him, forcing her to fight the fire herself. She worries overflowing water at power stations could also disrupt the entire city, but also that splashing a bucket of water on anyone won't rouse them any. She stops a sleepwalker from walking off a cliff and goes to find Dr. Zandmann to find a cure for this, leaving the sleepwalker lightly bound to a lamppost by his jacket. She finds he's asleep too, but in his notes discovers that loud noises will wake up the people, but it'll have to be really really loud. Thus, she visits the Wilton Wreckage Co. to starts some loud demolition, but finds it won't do anything. She decides before she talks, she should read a book and consults her local library to find the ony thing louder than earthquakes are falling meteors, prompting her to throw a meteor at New York City hard enough to break the sound barrier. This is loud enough to wake up everyone as “Wideawake” Willy is dizzied by the noise enough for Mary Marvel to punch him out. According to the Daily Gazette, Dr. Zandmann destroys the secret to the Sleep Sand as “too dangerous” and Willy finds that he can't sleep in jail!
Appearing in Mary Marvel: "Mary Marvel and The Sinister Sleep"
Featured Characters:
Supporting Characters:
- Dr. Zandmann
Antagonists:
- "Wideawake" Willy
Other Characters:
- A Sleepwalker
Locations:
Items:
- Dr. Zandmann's Sleep Sand
- The Daily Gazette
Vehicles:
Synopsis for Captain Marvel: "Captain Marvel Battles the World's Greatest Lies"
We open with a line from Shakespeare on how “The evil that men do lives after them!” and now that Adolf Hitler is dead, they quote him on how “Any lie will be believed if it is repeated often enough!” Meanwhile, Captain Marvel encounters known gangster “Fibber” Phox who has robbed a payroll, but insists he was framed. Captain Marvel returns how there's a reason that they call him “Fibber” and he instead just screams constantly that he's innocent, including loudly shouting in his own trial “I'm innocent! I was framed! It was another crook!” a minimum of forty times. This somehow endures them to him enough to inspire doubt and Phox goes free. Captain Marvel fumes inwardly that he can't stop him anymore, since he didn't actually catch him doing it. Thus, Phox spreads the word of Hitler to his men to just start putting up tons of posters that claim “The Whole Police Force is Crooked!” which is enough to start a riot. Billy Batson spots this and decides to solve this by calling SHAZAM & Captain Marvel heads them off before they can raid the police precinct. He soon tears down all the posters, but finds a skywriter is also writing it, who manages to turn smoke on him to escape. Captain Marvel decides that he can just undo it by doing the same thing on radio broadcast telling everyone that the police are not crooked.
To counter this, Phox starts a new campaign of terror to repeat that All the Money in the City is Poisoned! Which they believe after seeing a single person touch some money and then fall over. A nearby doctor goes to the man and points out he just had a stroke, but no one listens and instead money begins flying through the streets. Captain Marvel rightly assumes that Fibber Phox is behind this and finds him and his men scooping up discarded money with shovels into an open dump-truck. Captain Marvel punches Phox over, but runs off to dump the money out of the dump-truck to bury Captain Marvel for long enough to escape. Captain Marvel repeats 100 times on Station WHIZ that the money isn't poisoned, worrying now what Phox will do next. Phox starts his next campaign of “Captain Marvel is Getting Weak” and seems to lose confidence enough that he can't lift the bumper of a black sedan. Phox decides that Captain Marvel is surely someone he can stop now and Captain Marvel refuses, saying he's too weak to fight, prompting Phox to try punching him. However, Captain Marvel quickly proves him wrong directly by punching him out and arrests him as a passerby says that Captain Marvel won this fight. Captain Marvel jokes to the crowd that it was his own lie that defeated him, as all evil dooms itself… much like Hitler!
Appearing in Captain Marvel: "Captain Marvel Battles the World's Greatest Lies"
Featured Characters:
Supporting Characters:
Antagonists:
- "Fibber" Phox
- An Unscrupulous Skywriter
Other Characters:
- A Doctor
- A Jury
Locations:
Items:
Vehicles:
Trivia
- Despite the cover, the Marvel Family don't notice the Earth-Changing Machine from the Earth itself and it moves significantly more than cities.
- The quote from William Shakespeare is from The Tragedie of Julius Caesar, spoken by Mark Antony during Caesar's funeral. Naturally, he concludes that the good is "oft interred with their bones."
- The quote from "Hitler" is more commonly attributed to the equally-deceased Chancellor Goebbels, but also has no primary source to prove as much for either attribution. He may have said this on Earth-S.
See Also