How can I slow them down? What's the opposite of the swift deer? Wait, I have it! I'll find what I need here at the river! The slow turtle is the opposite of the swift deer! I'll gather an armful of them and rush to the city! 
The Marvel Family #43 is an issue of the series The Marvel Family (Volume 1) with a cover date of January, 1950.
Synopsis for The Marvel Family: "The Marvel Family and the March of the Grass"
Freddy Freeman is out selling papers, enjoying how it feels like he’s walking on soft grass before noticing that all the sidewalks and the streets are covered in grass, making a car swerve into a light pole. Freddy calls CAPTAIN MARVEL to become Captain Marvel, Junior and stops the car, noting how strange all this grass is! Elsewhere, Mary Batson finds that grass has grown over doors, trapping people in their homes until she calls SHAZAM to become Mary Marvel and tears the door open again, but still wondering why it would grow like this… Elsewhere still, Billy finds the grass has invaded his studio and is now short-circuiting the radio equipment, prompting him to call SHAZAM to summon Captain Marvel to turn off the master switch and go retrieve the rest of the Marvel Family to look into things further.
Together, they decide to remove the grass first and find that the grass is too strong to be destroyed by normal push-mowers and even at their strength, they can barely uproot it! Amid the grass, Doctor Sivana watches and giggles, since he’s created this “March of the Grass” by inventing a new and terrible “ironized grass” that is tough as iron wire and roots literally anywhere, tossing out handfuls of the seed into the street. The Marvel Family hear his usual snickering in an alleyway and go to take him to prison, but he throws grass seed in their faces and dives into the tall grass to disappear. They decide to split up and look into things further.
Mary Marvel helps a worker who is trapped by his exploded harvester (which also can’t cut ironized grass) and steps in front of him before it explodes into parts. Captain Marvel, Junior is able to push with super-strength to let trucks through to permit traffic and travel through the city. Captain Marvel consults a team of horticulturists about an herbicide to kill the grass, but finds that nothing is strong enough and the ironized grass grows far too fast. The Marvel Family come back together and figure out if they stand in a T-pose with their arms outstretched, finger-to-finger laterally, they can manage to cut down the grass enough to clear the streets. Back in his laboratory hideout, Sivana angrily fumes that the only thing that can kill the ironized grass entirely is an Acid Spray he invented and starts to put on a disguise. Soon enough, the jovial-looking “Professor Googlehoop” shows up to offer them the Acid Spray and that it works, then “offers” Captain Marvel a formula to create more of it. Afterwards, he snickers that he’s actually given them plant food that will make the ironized grass grow even more, only to be immediately found out when his beard falls off and Captain Marvel recognizes the formula clearly doesn’t make herbicide and they take turns punching him over and note they can use the Acid Spray to destroy the ironized grass now. Later, Sivana is forced to mow the prison lawns with a push-mower and the Marvel Family think on how they fixed the city and all the grass is gone now.
Appearing in The Marvel Family: "The Marvel Family and the March of the Grass"
Featured Characters:
Supporting Characters:
Antagonists:
Other Characters:
Locations:
Items:
- Push-Mowers
- Sivana's Ironized Grass
- Sivana's Acid Spray
- Sivana's "Professor Googlehoop" Disguise
Vehicles:
Synopsis for Captain Marvel, Jr.: "Capt. Marvel, Jr. and The News Blackout"
Freddy Freeman finds his friend, Mr. Fleet, is happy to get some medicine to his sick wife before he goes job-searching. Freddy thinks on how the paper is a wonderful way for people to attract information in this modern day until Fleet returns and points out what everyone else quickly tells Freddy: The newspaper today is blank! He quickly calls CAPTAIN MARVEL to become Captain Marvel, Jr. and flies out to The Evening Star’s offices to find the foreman of their press room is hogtied and gagged on the floor. When released, he says a masked man knocked him out, tied him up and put some kind of “disappearing ink” in to the presses. News-hating lawyer Cyrus Krouch is, at this moment, happy to find that the news is gone, but is alack when he remembers radio exists and decides to just stop that from happening too by popping on a domino mask, driving out to his local radio tower and blowing it up with a stick of lit dynamite. Hearing the explosion from across town, Junior flies in and finds it and realizes someone is trying to shut down all media reports for something in the news so it’ll be suppressed, but they don’t yet know what. In order to work around this media blackout, Junior picks up the news items himself and announces it while flying around the city with a megaphone as a “Blue Town Crier.” In order to stop this, Cyrus leans in to Joe’s Pool Room and has some gangster friends start making loud noises to drown out the news, but Junior flies in and breaks it up, finding out that Cyrus is the one who doesn’t want news getting out and flying to his house to investigate. While he does, Cyrus burns some papers and then legs it out to find that Cyrus was an estate lawyer for a rich man and that if the late man’s nephew (who he only refers to as “Ixy”) cannot make a “formal application” for it before midnight, all of his million-dollar fortune will go to Cyrus Krouch instead. Using a combination of borrowed neon signs on a flagpole, Junior is able to spread the news that he needs Ixy to go to the courthouse, but Cyrus soon shoot out the lights from a taxi, prompting Junior to pick him up and demand he come with him to meet “Ixy.” Arriving at the courthouse, Junior meets Irving Fleet, who was Ixy all along, and that his Australian uncle has left him a million-dollar fortune that he almost lost and promises Krouch will go to prison for this.
Appearing in Captain Marvel, Jr.: "Capt. Marvel, Jr. and The News Blackout"
Featured Characters:
Supporting Characters:
- Irving "Ixy" Fleet
Antagonists:
- Cyrus Krouch
Other Characters:
- The Evening Star Press Room Foreman
Locations:
- Earth-S
- New York City
- WHIZ Radio
- Joe's Pool Room
- The Evening Star
- Ajax Lunch
- New York City
Items:
- Disappearing Ink
- A Megaphone
- A Large Neon Sign for "Ixy" (Destroyed)
Vehicles:
Synopsis for Mary Marvel: "Mary Marvel and the Undersea Farm"
Mary Batson is out at the beach collecting seashells before someone dashes in, shouting about being robbed! She calls SHAZAM to become Mary Marvel and discovers the robbed man is one Hank Dobbin and his wife, Betty, who have been tricked into buying a plot of land that is apparently underwater from crooked real estate agent Roger Smott. Smott smugly lights his office on fire with all his paperwork in it and legs it so she’ll have to stop and put it out. Somehow, this means that she has no legal way to reimburse Dobbin and offers that perhaps he could try making some kind of new “farm underwater,” even if it’s impossible and nobody has done it before. Some weeks later, Mary finds that Hank and Betty are now living on a boat on their “land” and finds Betty shouting for help, since Hank is now an underwater farmer and is being attacked in his diving suit by a gigantic octopus! Once the beast is gone, Mary Marvel puts on a diving helmet so she can speak to him and finds out that Hank is now running his underwater farm which grows the splendors of the sea: edible seaweeds and agar, sponges and oysters and now calls it “Aqua Acres.” They offer Mary some pearls in exchange for her “inspiration” of the idea as Roger Smott watches from nearby, willing to fully take responsibility for the land now that it’s developed and profitable. The Dobbins refuse and mock how Smott clearly has been outsold, prompting the land developer to drive by later in a speedboat to cut Hank’s airline and knocks Betty off her ship with a long pole, hoping to just drown both of them so he can steal their farm. Mary Marvel flies in carrying a reporter who was to write about Aqua Acres and rescues Betty, then dives in to get Hank to air in time while Smott speeds off. Mary Marvel goes to the city to get them replacement tubes for their air supply, only for Smott to return when she does, chumming the water with meat for sharks and then ramming the Dobbins ship to. However, he quickly finds that Mary Marvel anticipated this tactic and that she hadn’t truly left the area, punching the sharks to disperse them and then punching out Smott himself. Later, Mary Marvel notes that Hank really turned a “loss” into a bonanza and that the Evening Star got a great headline out of it too!
Appearing in Mary Marvel: "Mary Marvel and the Undersea Farm"
Featured Characters:
Supporting Characters:
- Hank Dobbin
- Betty Dobbin
Antagonists:
- Roger Smott
Other Characters:
- An Evening Star Reporter
Locations:
- Earth-S
- New York City
- Aqua Acres
- New York City
Items:
- A Diving Suit
Vehicles:
Synopsis for Captain Marvel: "Captain Marvel and the Great Speed-Up!"
Billy Batson reports at Station WHIZ that a hurricane is on its way to the town of Crayville south of them and calls SHAZAM once he’s finished to head up the evacuation with Captain Marvel. He finds most of the evacuation has already happened, but that a sparse hundred are still trapped in town. Captain Marvel hurries them all into a singular building and then uproots its foundation and flies it off to the edge of town where it’ll be safe and starts trying to fly back to pin down buildings so they don’t go flying. However, even he cannot stop a natural disaster entirely and the house he’s holding is obliterated by the storm. The next morning, Billy Batson releases a tragic broadcast about how Crayville was wiped out and reduced to flinders and rubble and it’ll take certain months for them to rebuild entirely… Until a boisterous man shows up and declares he’s going to rebuild Crayville in just one day! This man, Don Laird, claims to have invented new Speed Pills made from “deer muscles” that make his three workers, Joe, Hank and Bob, move at superhuman speeds and move in a motion blur. Billy’s mood improves as he reports on how Speed Pills are getting Crayville rebuilt one house per ten seconds and decides to call SHAZAM to have Captain Marvel help as well. However, he is shocked to find that the Speed Pills make these men work faster than even the Speed of Mercury and they easily outpace him in construction, so he instead removes heavy wreckage to clear out of their way. Half of the town is rebuilt by noon, but the workers are becoming concerned, since they cannot slow down, now moving too fast to not be a danger to others merely by moving at the speeds they are. Chasing down Laird himself, Captain Marvel finds even Laird doesn’t know how long the pills will take, but hopes that they’ll slow down somehow before they burn out entirely. Captain Marvel puzzles on this and realizes the opposite of deer muscles would be something from… a turtle, the slowest of animals and takes it to a lab to reduce their essence into something that human beings can drink.
Racing around town, he is able to cure the Speed Pills' effect with his Turtle Slowness Serum. Despite having a verifiable cure for it, Captain Marvel declares that the Speed Pills are too dangerous to be used and crushed the bottle of them underfoot. He offers that the men should get a year’s worth of pay (since they did a year’s worth of work, even if it was all at once,) but they decline, saying that helping these people was reward enough itself. Later still though, Billy notes that the people of Crayville were more grateful: there’s a statue of Don Laird in the park now, calling him “Rebuilder of Crayville.”
Appearing in Captain Marvel: "Captain Marvel and the Great Speed-Up!"
Featured Characters:
Supporting Characters:
- Don Laird, Rebuilder of Crayville
- Joe
- Hank
- Bob
Antagonists:
- An Unnamed Devastating Hurricane
Other Characters:
Locations:
- Earth-S
- New York City
- WHIZ Radio
- Crayville
- New York City
Items:
- Laird's Speed Pills (Destroyed)
- Statue of Don Laird
- Captain Marvel's Turtle Slowness Serum
- An Armful of River Turtles (Destroyed)
Vehicles:
Notes
- Don Laird's Speed Pills give his workers powers moderately similar to The Flash, another superhero known for his super-speed and scientific origin.
Trivia
- At this point in history, the US Weather Bureau did not "name" Tropical Cyclones typically, instead using general letter-attributions from the Joint Army/Navy Phonetic Alphabet. Although some were "named" during World War II, only the US Armed Services referred to Pacific typhoons by the names of ladies to differentiate between them, and it would not be until later in 1953 that a list of prepared human names were used. Beforehand, they would assign a name historically after where it struck the hardest (e.g. the 1928 Okeechobee Hurricane.)
- This, coincidentally, was due to a rash of tropical cyclones appearing all at once through the 1950 Atlantic Hurricane Season and people becoming confused by multiple radio reports of hurricanes all at once.
See Also