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"Captain Marvel: "Captain Marvel Duels The Disaster Master!"": Billy Batson is at a Station WHIZ Listening Post where he hears the “Disaster Master” who says he can create floods, hurricanes, earthquakes and other disasters all over the Earth and warns he’ll unleash one soon. Billy tunes him out

Quote1 Give up, Captain Marvel! I'm too clever! You can't stop me! And now I'm going to pull another lever of my machine! Which one? What great disaster will happen next? Don't you wish you knew in advance? Hahhh! Quote2
Disaster Master

Whiz Comics #144 is an issue of the series Whiz Comics (Volume 1) with a cover date of April, 1952.

Synopsis for Captain Marvel: "Captain Marvel Duels The Disaster Master!"

Billy Batson is at a Station WHIZ Listening Post where he hears the “Disaster Master” who says he can create floods, hurricanes, earthquakes and other disasters all over the Earth and warns he’ll unleash one soon. Billy tunes him out, but soon after there’s a cyclone striking the southern coast of Station Bombay. Billy calls SHAZAM to summon Captain Marvel and flies out to the Republic of India. He creates a large tunnel for the villagers to enter until the cyclone blows over and he leaves, wondering who this Disaster Master is or why he’s telling people. He tries to call up the Disaster Master, who takes responsibility for the cyclone in India. Captain Marvel asks him to speak on that and the Disaster Master is revealed to be a man who looks like Doctor Sivana with a spiffy haircut, and admits he has a Disaster Dealer machine that uses “atomic power” to unleash these disasters wherever he wants them to. He mocks that he won’t be giving Captain Marvel any hints now.

Captain Marvel pensively waits for the next disaster, which is an oil well fire in Oklahoma. He quickly picks up a train car full of sand and puts out the fire and, over the course of days, stops a railroad wreck by rescuing passengers, a Japanese earthquake, a French flood and an American explosives plant goes up. Captain Marvel calls the Disaster Master again and says he doesn’t believe he has a machine. Disaster Master offers he send anyone he likes to see it and he offers to send Billy Batson, calling SHAZAM and then flying out to Mount Baldy, where he lands is immediately knocked out, bound, gagged, blindfolded and walked to where the Disaster Dealer is. He leads him to it and shows it to him, but then replaces his blindfold, ready to lead him back out, saying he wants a billion dollars. Billy bolts out of his grip and say accidentally leaps off a cliffside. He manages to slip his gag on a sharp rock before he’s impaled on many more and calls SHAZAM to fly up and punch out the Disaster Master, finding the Disaster Dealer was entirely fake after all, they were just natural disasters! The Disaster Master tries to offer he only committed a fake crime, but Billy signs off saying real extortion is illegal and he deserves to be in jail for it.

Appearing in Captain Marvel: "Captain Marvel Duels The Disaster Master!"

Featured Characters:

Supporting Characters:


Antagonists:

Other Characters:


Locations:

Items:

  • The Disaster Dealer (Destroyed)

Vehicles:

  • The Disaster Master's Blue Sedan


Synopsis for Golden Arrow: "Golden Arrow and the Ball of Doom!"

Golden Arrow is visiting his friend Chief Black Water while other braves are outside playing the healthy Native American game of lacrosse. While visiting him, he notes the braves are quite excited, but him and Chief Black Water soon find the shouts are getting aggressive and the men of his tribe have started fist-fighting. However, they quickly learn that the real argument is a love triangle: Silver River has chosen to marry Gray Beaver over Long Horn, who thinks himself the better man. Chief Black Water says he's ruined the game for everyone and orders them off to do chores, but Long Horn is suspiciously adamant that Silver River will not marry Gray Beaver. Chief Black Water voices his concerns about Long Horn's violent nature. That night, Golden Arrow returns to Dry Gulch and happens to notice a light on in the explosives shop and that Long Horn is filling a lacrosse ball with nitroglycerin! He watches him walk to a back room and prepares to ambush him, but Long Horn sneaks out the back door and back around to knock out Golden Arrow. Long Horn ties his hands and puts Golden Arrow over his horse and explains in detail how he's going to use the exploding lacrosse ball to kill Gray Beaver by switching it with the real ball. Having explained his entire plan, he throws Golden Arrow into a river near the falls. Golden Arrow manages to free his arms against a sharpish rock and manages to use the rope from his wrists to fire a line into a nearby tree, pulling himself to safety. Racing to the reservation, he is able to arrive in time to see Long Horn try to whip the ball of doom at Gray Beaver, shooting it with an arrow, making it explode harmlessly in mid-air. Long Horn tries to approach him aggressively, but Golden Arrow tackles him and defeats him in a quick fistfight. Explaining it all to Chief Black Water, he is soon thanked for his heroic work and promised that Long Horn will face justice.

Appearing in Golden Arrow: "Golden Arrow and the Ball of Doom!"

Featured Characters:

Supporting Characters:

  • Chief Black Water

Antagonists:

  • Long Horn

Other Characters:

  • Gray Beaver
  • Silver River (Mentioned only)

Locations:

Items:

  • Lacrosse Sticks
    • A Lacrosse Ball
    • An Explosive Lacrosse Ball

Vehicles:

Synopsis for Lance O'Casey: "Lance O'Casey and The Flowers of Death!"

Lance and Mike are at a port near the Amazon Delta to help out a friend, Prof. Mercer, who is looking to find his friend, Dr. Blake. Last year, he sent him a special unknown flower from the Amazon to his botanical museum, their own lead to where he may be. Mike sniffs the singular flower and becomes lightheaded and dizzy. Prof. Mercer says that's why he put it near a porthole and warns it has an incredibly strong smell. A native stevedore spots it and calls this the "flower of death" and immediately starts to freak out, but when they ask what that means, he says he's forbidden to talk about it from his "white master." They decide to look into this and head to the nearby trading post, finding the man they spoke to was from the Maniche region 300 miles upriver. Some days later, they see the flowers of death on the shore, only for a man to order the natives to kill everyone on the Starfish. Lance and Mike try fighting them, but find the men get back up no matter how many hits they take and drag them to their master, Dr. Blake! Blake now believes that Mercer has come to spy on him and Mercer points out he hasn't seen him in two years and Blake is confused that the world has yet to hear of his "great discovery." Mercer asks if he's okay, but Blake is evasive, instead offering to show them his "experimental" garden and gives them each a gas mask to go about looking at it. These are still flowers of death, but much larger and, therefore, much more effective. Though it doesn't kill, the noxious effect turns men into "human robots" that follow orders and are resistant to pain. Mike asks if there's anything that counteracts it and Blake points to a large jug of antidote for it he has on a nearby table. Prof. Mercer warns Blake that though his discovery is rather great, it's also dangerous.

He offers they take the formula to the states, but Dr. Blake instead offers a less appealing offer: using the flowers of death to create an army of "automatons" to conquer the world and offers they join him as Masters of the Universe. When Lance calls him insane, he tries to spray him in the face, only to hit Mike when he takes the spray for his captain. Dr. Blake quickly finds he doesn't have a spare bottle of gas, so he instead orders Mike and Prof. Mercer to seize him instead, managing to knock him out with a club. Lance figures out while being tied up when he awakens that these robotic men will take any orders and orders Mercer to untie him, which he does. When Lance returns to clean house, Dr. Blake takes the easy way out by leaping out his own window into the flowers. They soon use the antidote to cure everyone else but Dr. Blake, who they reason will be probably end up in an institution to be taken care of. Prof. Mercer says that the flowers of death will all be destroyed along with all of Blake's research as Mike recalls they still have one, throwing it overboard.

Appearing in Lance O'Casey: "Lance O'Casey and The Flowers of Death!"

Featured Characters:

Supporting Characters:

Antagonists:

  • Dr. Blake

Other Characters:


Locations:

Items:

  • The Flowers of Death (Destroyed)

Vehicles:

  • The Starfish

Synopsis for Ibis the Invincible: "The Enchanted Forest"

Prince Ibis and Princess Taia are out with their friend Tom Ellis, who is developing an area of countryside to build homes, which has cost a lot of money to do and has been plagued by accidents throughout. Ibis finds a tree falling on him, wishes on the Ibistick for it to split in two, saving him. A foreman says that he knows he cut that tree correctly, but it still nearly fell on him. His men, superstitious of the accidents, all walk out on him. Ibis helps out by wishing for the equipment to all work by itself. In the night though, the trees seem to “speak” to one another, furious that they are being pushed away as this is an enchanted forest! Thus, five trees and two boulders set to work destroying the timber equipment and break in through Ellis’ window to shove him into its hollow trunk. Ibis, meanwhile, reads about the Dark Sorcerer, the first black magician of America from Colonial times who lived in an enchanted forest where no man dared enter and worries that Ellis and his building site might be haunted now. He wishes their shanty fly all the way out there to and finds that he’s inside one of the trees marching through a nearby town. One of the rocks flies at them, but Ibis wishes it into water. One of the trees attacks Princess Taia and he wishes they instead fight against the other trees. To finish this for good, he summons the Dark Sorcerer himself from the dead and demands he remove the spell and punches him repeatedly in the face until he agrees to do so. Later, the Dark Sorcerer’s spell is broken and Tom Ellis finished making the new development: Enchanted Village!

Appearing in Ibis the Invincible: "The Enchanted Forest"

Featured Characters:

Supporting Characters:

Antagonists:

  • The Dark Sorcerer
    • The Enchanted Forest Trees
    • The Enchanted Forest Rocks

Other Characters:

  • A Foreman

Locations:

  • Earth-S
    • The Dark Sorcerer's Enchanted Forest

Items:

Vehicles:

  • A Flying Shanty

Trivia

  • The use of psychoactive flowers to control people like "human robots" bears a sharp resemblance to Haitian Vodou practices and the use of the Datura flower, much like the kind used in The Serpent and the Rainbow. The Flower of Death even resembles the "Devil's Trumpet," though these are mostly red or green, as opposed to white.
  • This issue confusingly depicts Ibis the Invincible summoning someone from the dead, one of the few things that the Ibistick does not have domain over.


See Also


Links and References

Superboy Vol 4 69
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