The Marvel Family #64 is an issue of the series The Marvel Family (Volume 1) with a cover date of October, 1951.
Synopsis for The Marvel Family: "The Marvel Family battles Sivana's Terrible Television Plot"
Explorers find tribes who communicate by drumming on logs to be ridiculously “backwards” until Captain Marvel suddenly lands, handing out free battery-powered TVs for the world’s first “World Television Program,” dropping off sets in the Arctic while Mary Marvel does so in the Himalayas. Using his gigantic new World Television Transmitter, Sterling Morris has started the first International Television Station USA-TV! They can now travel as far as 50 miles out (before they run into problems with the Earth being curved) and then are released by a mile-tall aerial to beam directly into Earth’s ionosphere. Mr. Morris thanks Captain Marvel for his help and says that USA-TV is dedicated to 7 Ideals: Spread Peace, Advance Democracy, Educate World, Promote Culture, Boost Civilization, Provide Entertainment & Reduce Crime. When Captain Marvel asks about the last one, Mr. Morris offers that people can see someone like Sivana all over the world, he’ll be easier to arrest, since he’s back out there and at it again.
Dr. Sivana, unwilling to let people be happy, flies a blue rocket-ship to USA-TV’s aerial and blasts it with a heat ray to make it buckle and fall over, but the Marvel Family soon fly up and push it back into place and fix it with a quick weld. Sivana drops a bomb twice as powerful as the Atom Bomb into the desert, prompting the Marvel Family to go look into, finding a giant hole in the ground while Sivana prepares to bomb USA-TV while they begin to start broadcast of the world’s first World-Wide TV Program!
Doctor Sivana realizes he can use a worldwide television network to better spread his own propaganda and catches the missile so he won’t destroy USA-TV, instead deciding to now seize it for himself. As the program goes to start, Sivana uses a hunk of meat to lure a live ocelot into jumping into USA-TV’s station, forcing Captain Marvel to punch it unconscious to carry it off to the forest while Mr. Morris continues preparations. Sivana sneaks in during the catastrophe and flips a certain switch he knows will cause everything to short out. The Marvel Family are forced to leap into action to drag people away from arcing electricity until Captain Marvel can rip the power box out and fix it. Just as the program is about to begin, Sivana sprays a man who’s sweating nearby with black ink to darken it, then starts screaming that this is THE BLACK PLAGUE! Captain Marvel points out there isn’t plague in America, but people start trampling their way out anyways, leaving Mr. Morris to run the entirety of USA-TV by himself… or at least with the Marvel Family there. He moves him outside so the three can return to normal for a moment, just to check and see if there are any real toxins in the air. But when they do so and find that there aren’t, Sivana clubs all three of them and they wake up bound and gagged on the floor while Sivana renames the station Sivana WORLD-TV. He soon kicks the kids off of an icy slope next to the station and they fall out into the snow where they’re due to freeze / smother quickly...
Sivana introduces the 6 Ideals of Sivana WORLD-TV are Smashing Peace, Destroy Democracy, Spread Ignorance, Crush Culture, Boot Civilization and Increase Crime (He is seemingly ambivalent about Entertaining people.) Sivana changes into an ermine-lined robe and crown to announce the start of Sivana WORLD-TV while Mr. Morris has run down to save the Marvel kids, but finds he can’t get a pulse from them and leaves them, unbound and ungagged, thinking that they’re dead and decides he’s just going to strangle Sivana to death. The kids call SHAZAM and CAPTAIN MARVEL to become the Marvel Family again, picking up Mr. Morris, but find that the entire USA-TV Station is… gone! Sivana starts spreading rumors that the Marvel Family are actually evil and steal from him as many people around the world enjoy the pleasure of black-and-white television in English. Soon, the Marvel Family figure out that Sivana has made the station invisible, so they break in and start cleaning house of Sivana’s many goons while Sivana retreats to his rocket-ship.
USA-TV is restarted with Captain Marvel showing that all the footage of him attacking Sivana was for him constantly trying to kill people and conquer the Earth and asks people to look out for and report their local constabulary if they see him. The Marvel Family soon get all sorts of reports across the world from when Sivana lands, finding he’s now a pariah, even being found out in a volcanic caldera when the local Mexican authorities report on him. Soon enough, Captain Marvel and Mr. Morris welcome the world to the first worldwide broadcast of Station USA-TV, the first world news station that reaches everyone and define that their ideals are peace, democracy and the end of war and evil.
Appearing in The Marvel Family: "The Marvel Family battles Sivana's Terrible Television Plot"
Featured Characters:
Supporting Characters:
Antagonists:
- Doctor Sivana
- A Live Ocelot
Other Characters:
Locations:
- Earth-S
- New York City
- Station USA-TV
Items:
- African Talking Logs
- Sivana's Fake Black Plague Ink Spray
- Sivana's Invisibility Machine (Destroyed)
Vehicles:
- Sivana's Rocket-Ship (Destroyed)
Notes
- This story comes in three chapters:
- chapter One ~ The Sivana Bomb Strikes
- chapter Two ~ Doom to USA-TV
- chapter Three ~ The WORLD-TV Man Hunt
See Also