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Quote1 It's mine! Mine! The power and the glory... The pomp and circumstance... The universe... It's all mine! Only I could be capable of such a victory! Only I could reduce my greatest nemesis... to Big Red Cheez Whiz! Quote2
Doctor Sivana src

Doctor Sivana was the first and most frequently recurring of Captain Marvel's enemies.

Origin

According to Beautia Sivana, in the early 20th century, Sivana was one of the most brilliant and promising of the young scientists of Europe. Idealistic and naive, he encountered endless rejection for his world-bettering inventions and mankind-improving schemes, from cynical politicians and crony industrialists who liked the world just the way it was. Finally penniless, outcast, and half mad, the widowed scientist gathered his two tiny children, boarded a rocketship of his own creation, and withdrew to the planet Venus. There amid the overwhelming dangers of the fierce jungle planet, he raised his children to young adulthood.[2]

1940

Doctor Sivana developed a "Radio-Silencer" ray, capable of driving all radio broadcasters off the air, and attempted to extort fifty million dollars from the commercial broadcasting industry. Captain Marvel smashed this scheme, but Sivana escaped.[3]

But Sivana had a larger mad scheme in the works, one that he must have been working on for years beforehand. He had been raising a supremely powerful army, with thousands of super soldiers, and hundreds of streamlined tanks, and artillery and 120-mph combat cars, and the mightiest air fleet in history. He declared war on the United States, and attacked Washington DC. Captain Marvel intervened, and Sivana attempted to destroy him with an "Atom Smasher" explosive device, but succeeded only in killing most of his own troops. Sivana was seemingly killed, in this defeat.[4]

Sivana re-emerged shortly later, with a third mad scheme, one which likewise must have been in development for several years beforehand. He had, some time earlier, traveled to the planet Venus, explored it, and established a rocket base, and installed his daughter Beautia as Empress of the planet. He attempted unsuccessfully to strand Captain Marvel on the planet Venus, and in the process discovered the secret of Billy Batson's dual identity. Sivana escaped, at the end of this misadventure.[5]

Sivana's fourth campaign was to fund and direct his daughter Beautia as a candidate for the U.S. presidency. At this time is was not publicly known that Beautia was Sivana's daughter, and in her campaign she didn't use her last name. Shortly before Election Day, Captain Marvel intervened, and as things shook out, Beautia had been exiled to Venus, and Sivana had escaped.[6]

So, having succeeded at space colonization, while failing at industrial-level extortion, military conquest, and national politics, Sivana then entered the circus business. He imported to Earth six rocketshipsful of exotic and dangerous Venusian animals. Captain Marvel killed all of these animals, but Sivana escaped to Venus.[7]

Sivana's next big strategy, his sixth, was to build an artificial man, with superhuman strength, speed, durability, agility, and cunning, and a personality of its own, and send it out to fight Captain Marvel. Three fistfights later the android, "Z", was destroyed, and revealed to be a mechanical contraption, while amid all the carnage, Sivana escaped.[8]

Sivana's seventh big and evil scheme was the systematic destruction of several U.S. military defenses along the Pacific Coast. Captain Marvel put an end to this mischief, with the help of Beautia, ex-Empress of Venus and colleague of Sivana, who had a change of heart. Ex-presidential candidate Beautia was hailed as a public hero, while Doctor Sivana escaped aboard a stolen aerial torpedo.[9] At this time it was still not known, seemingly even to Billy Batson, that Beautia and the Doctor were related.

Very late in 1940, Sivana's next ambitious crime scheme, his eighth, was to invent a weather-controlling machine, on Venus, and use it in a complicated insurance-fraud racket. Captain Marvel smashed the machinery, with a giant locust, then used Sivana's own rocketship to exile the Doctor and Beautia on Venus, for the second time.[10]

1941

Sivana's ninth master plan grew out of his development of a powerful rejuvenating formula, one sip of which was sufficient to devolve an adult into an infant. He used this potion to create diversions and frame some patsies for a series of otherwise-ordinary robberies, then introduced a large volume of it into the reservoir of a U.S. Army base, turning all of the soldiers into babies, to facilitate the theft of many weapons. Captain Marvel thwarted this whole scheme; Sivana was captured and jailed; Beautia was captured and released.[11]

While awaiting trial, using only pencil and paper, Sivana figured out how to make himself intangible, and used this knowledge to escape from custody, and to launch a new series of destructive and ambitious crimes, culminating in the kidnapping of the U.S. President. This was his tenth super criminal campaign, and it seemed to be over and won, when Sivana succeeded in imprisoning Captain Marvel inside a diamond-hard underground cell. But Marvel was able to work out the same calculations, in his head, that Sivana had spent days figuring out, and phased himself out of the prison. With both adversaries now using intangibility, there was a chase and a struggle, until Sivana's form became transparent and indistinct, then vanished completely. In Captain Marvel's opinion, Sivana was now gone for good.[12]

Sivana survived this molecular disruption, in some unknown way, and returned to New York, where he spent up to a month establishing (or more likely re-establishing) himself as "Footo Yu," Ruler of Chinatown and Boss of All Rackets. At the same time, in a jungle in Central America, Sivana had established an industrial-scale incubator farm, and was breeding Venusian Glompers for some unknown purpose. Whatever he was up to, this would be his eleventh big and evil scheme. Captain Marvel stumbled across these activities mainly by accident, but shut them down very quickly after that. In a landslide amid a melee, Sivana was smashed with a large boulder, and knocked into a coma. In this condition, he was again marooned on Venus (for the third time), along with his children Magnificus and Beautia.[13]

Sivana's twelfth misadventure began, on Earth, with his invention of a potion which would, on skin contact, instantly shrink any person down to germ size or smaller. He used this formula on Billy Batson and then on his erstwhile ally Beautia, who both landed in a flower pot, where they were beset by ordinary insects, then by ordinary germs, then by Sivana's miniature servants the Germ People. But curiosity got the better of Sivana, and he shrank himself down to germ size to observe the misfortunes of Captain Marvel and Beautia, and gloat. This tipped them off that Sivana had a means of restoring his own normal size. Beautia found a jar of this antidote, they both ingested it, and regained their normal size. Captain Marvel ended the encounter by tossing Sivana into a passing garbage truck, so he may have escaped.[14]

Sivana's thirteenth big and evil scheme involved developing a new metal that was stronger than steel, and some extremely delicate electrical motors, to construct a powered exoskeleton which, worn under a sharp-looking tuxedo, made Sivana quite an imposing figure indeed. He revisited an old haunt of his, a dumpy underworld bar, and picked fights with two old evil associates, both big-talking punks, whom he handily dispatched. When Captain Marvel arrived in the bar, Sivana claimed to be as tough as Cap, and wanted to duke it out. He punched Marvel hard enough for him to actually feel it, but then Marvel punched him through a brick wall, out into the alley. Sivana's new outfit was durable enough for him to survive this treatment and fast enough for him to escape. In a second encounter, the Robot Body was partly disassembled by Captain Marvel, and Sivana was punched loose from the suit, and out through an open window, but he did manage to escape again (for the third time in a row).[15]

Sivana's fourteenth revenge scheme was to team up with Herr Geyer, Capt. Death, and Biggy Brix in an ad hoc attempt to eliminate Captain Marvel by murdering Billy Batson. Sivana deployed no new technology in this misadventure, and at the end of it, there were four Marvels instead of just one. Sivana was seemingly killed in a plane crash, along with his three allies.[16]

Sivana's fifteenth mad plan was to attack New York City with paralyzing gas, dropped in sacks from a dirigible. The gas temporarily paralyzed a large number of people, but soon wore off. At the end of this misadventure, Sivana ended up in the hands of a vengeful mob of New Yorkers.[17]

It's unclear how he escaped that predicament, but later in the same year, Sivana undertook his sixteenth diabolical campaign. He combined, in one humanoid body, the strength of a gorilla, the speed of a serpent, the fighting skill of a tiger, the cunning of a fox, the bravery of a lion, and the memory of an elephant, powered by the Life Force drawn from a thousand beasts. The resulting Beast Ruler was uncontrollable, and it chased Sivana right out of his own laboratory, then set free all of his test animals. Captain Marvel pursued the Beast-Ruler, without first securing Sivana, and by the time he returned, the old schemer had slipped away.[18]

Sivana's seventeenth revenge scheme, like his 14th, was completely impromptu, developed no new technology, and was opposed by four Marvels. He also had a falling out with his old ally Beautia, and left her tied and gagged in a closet, in a building that was set up to get blown to bits. Sivana was apparently killed in the ensuing explosion, but survived, shaken ragged and angry, to scheme again.[19]

Sivana's eighteenth ambitious crime scheme centered around kidnapping Katinka, the Princess of Mentonia, and framing Captain Marvel for the crime. The plan involved staging a fake fund-raising theater-party for orphan children, duping Beautia into acting as a front, and using plastic surgery to create a Captain Marvel impersonator, to do the main crime. No new technology was deployed in this campaign, for the second time in a row, and the scheme itself was too elaborate by half, in that it depended on deceiving Beautia about the identity of the fake Captain Marvel. It fell apart quickly after Captain Marvel got wind of it.[20]


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Powers

  • Intangibility:
    • Doctor Sivana once discovered a mathematical formula which, when recited, allowed him to walk through walls and solid objects, making himself almost impossible to imprison or even catch. Long-term use of this technique takes a life-endangering physical toll on the user.
      • Captain Marvel independently discovered this same formula, and gained the same ability.[21]

Abilities

  • Genius Level Intellect: Doctor Sivana possesses a genius-level intellect and is an expert in the fields of robotics, electronics, and chemistry.
    • Alien Animal Husbandry
      • Sivana bred and raised at least one entire generation of Venusian Glompers, on Earth.[22]
    • Chemistry
    • Electronics
    • Medicine
      • He once stitched together, from animal tissues, an artificial manlike "Beast-Ruler", with a number of superhuman abilities.[23]
    • Robotics
      • Z, Sivana's anti-Marvel artificial man, with superhuman strength, speed, durability, agility, and cunning, and a personality of its own.[24]
      • Sivana's "Robot Body" turned the stunted little gnome into a tall and dapper man about town, with superhuman speed and strength.[25]
    • Science

Other Characteristics

Madness: He frequently has delusions of grandeur (referring to himself as the legitimate ruler of the universe various times); Sivana was linked to evil to such an extent that when some of his inventions has beneficial effects, he hides them so that humanity can not benefit. Once Sivana won the Nobel Prize for his beneficial inventions after Captain Marvel found and revealed them to the world, he considered himself insulted [27].

Equipment

Various highly advanced gadgets, weapons and computerized systems.

  • His "Radio-Silencer" ray was capable of driving all commercial and military broadcasters off the air.[28]
  • Sivana's "Memory Mangler" once erased, from Billy Batson's mind, all knowledge of his SHAZAM powers or how to access them.[29]
  • Shrinking secrets:
    • Sivana had a potion which, if splashed upon himself or another person, shrank that person very rapidly down to sub-germ size. This formula was effective on Billy Batson, but miniature Billy was able to change to miniature Captain Marvel, who also remained small, until an antidote was found.[30]
    • Sivana's "Dwindle Wafers" enabled any person who ate one to instantly compress all the atoms of their body (and clothing), shrinking themself to the size of a mouse. The Marvel Family, in their invulnerable forms, were unaffected by these pills, but in their normal forms were able to use them to shrink.[31]
  • Doctor Sivana's Time Pills: Sivana's "Time Pills" enabled him to revisit the past and return to the present.[32]
  • Sivanium: Sivana created a metal that when made in human form could create an army of duplicates.[33]
  • One of Sivana's crowning achievements was the creation of a powerful new element, known as Suspendium.[34]
  • From his palace on Venus, Sivana and his gigantic Weather Making Machine could create catastrophic effects, at any spot on Earth, thirty million miles away. These included: cyclones, hail storms, floods, earthquakes, and swarming giant locusts.[35]
  • His "Fountain of Youth Water" turned several adults, including most of a city's police force, all the men of an Army base, and Billy Batson, into babies.[36]
  • One of his inventions resurrected Black Adam.[37]

Transportation

Extremely advanced submarines, spaceships, flying harnesses, etc.

  • His streamlined interplanetary rocketships, and he had quite a few, could get from Earth to Venus in just a few hours.[38]

Weapons

  • Sivana's "Atom-Smasher" explosive was capable of destroying an entire army in a single burst, and did so.[39]
  • His "Death-Ray" pistol was capable of annihilating an army, yet ineffectual against Captain Marvel.[40]
  • His paralyzing gas, distributed by an advanced pumping device, was said to be capable of affecting every person in the United States.[41] In a later attack, dropped in sacks from a dirigible, it proved effective in immobilizing most of the people in New York City, temporarily.[42]
  • His poison gas, enough to kill fifty men, was conveniently concealed in a harmless-looking fountain pen.[43] This formula was ineffective against Captain Marvel.


  • This version of Dr. Sivana, including all history and corresponding appearances, was erased from existence following the collapse of the original Multiverse in the 1985–86 Crisis on Infinite Earths event and later restored following the rebirth of the infinite Multiverse during the Dark Crisis of 2022-2023. Even though other versions of the character may have appeared, this information does not apply to those versions.
  • Shazam! #1 was Dr. Sivana's first appearance in a comic published by DC Comics.
  • Thaddeus Bodog Sivana's full name was first revealed in Whiz Comics Vol 1 14, page 2, panel 2.

Related

Footnotes


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Marvel Family Villain
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This character is or was primarily an enemy of Captain Marvel, the Wizard Shazam, or any of the extended members of the Marvel Family. This template will categorize articles that include it into the category "Marvel Family Villains."

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