The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: Captain Marvel

  • SUPER-VILLAIN FILE 001: DR SIVANA

    (Whiz Comics 002, 1940) 

    Hearken back to yesterday’s Captain Marvel entry and you will see a tale of woe in which I lament my own poor planning with regard to how I dealt with non-obscure super-heroes. Well, I didn’t do much better with name-brand super-villains, I’ll tell you what. The Super-Villain Yearbook was an okay idea, but I didn’t really have a good implementation. I was going to be cluttering up my indices with links! Instead, we’re going to have main entries for the cads and bounders, like this one, and do all the linking to later developments here.

    So: Dr Sivana. Known very briefly as the Phantom Scientist in his first appearance, his initial scheme was a fairly straightforward ransom of the US radio broadcasting system. It is wild how thoroughly he is realized in this initial appearance, and how great a difference in quality there is between this story and some of the ones I’ve been reading lately.

    A deadly enmity is almost instantly established between Captain Marvel and Dr Sivana. Not only do they hate one another forever, but Captain Marvel is pretty clearly trying to kill Sivana as the other way around for the first couple of years. Anyway: top notch villain, little creep, very fun.

    UPDATES: 

    Dr Sivana 1940

    Dr Sivana 1941 (Whiz Comics) 

    CHILDREN: 

    Beautia Sivana (Whiz Comics 003b, 1940) 

    Magnificus Sivana (Whiz Comics 015, 1941)

    FULL NAME: 

    Dr Thaddeus Bodog Sivana 

    HENCHMEN AND CREATIONS: 

    the Beast-Ruler (Captain Marvel Adventures 003, 1941)

    Z (Captain Marvel Adventures 001, 1941) 

    MISC 

    This is a pretty good Dr Sivana thesis statement. (Whiz Comics 020, 1941)

  • SUPER-HERO FILE 001: CAPTAIN MARVEL

    (Whiz Comics 002, 1940) 

    When I fist made this blog it was mostly as a way to keep up a twitter thread that I was really enjoying but which was not enough to keep me on a rapidly-curdling social media platform. This is why all of the early entries are so short: because they’re just beefed-up tweets. This is also why I focused so heavily on obscure super-villains at first and only expanded my purview to include obscure super-heroes and more prominent super-villains gradually and haphazardly over time. Well, it’s time for another expansion of scope, because there are all kinds of interesting things about the big-name super-heroes and I just gotta mention them when I see them. Thus, the Super-Hero Files, which, if all goes to plan, are going to act as landing pages for all of those interesting things. And as he’s the first major super-hero to cross my computer screen since I decided to do this, our initial subject is Captain Marvel!

    Any super-hero origin story has its weird and charming elements that are later revisited and iterated on throughout the years, but Captain Marvel’s might just have the most of those? Let’s count them as we go.

    Billy Batson, the most downtrodden and good-hearted boy in the world (1) is approached by a mysterious shadowy man (2) and taken on a ride in a magical subway car (3).

    (1) Future retelling of this origin try to double down on both the misery and the goodness but it’s there from the start. He sleeps in a subway station, but he’s upbeat about it.

    (2) Remains mysterious until 1994, when Roy Thomas establishes that this is the ghost of Billy Batson’s father.

    (3) I don’t know if the subway car is ever revealed to actually be Zeus’ chariot or something but I am pretty happy that it keeps on showing up and hasn’t been relegated to the “Too Silly FOR COMIC BOOKS” pile.

    Billy enters a colossal cavern (4) and walks past statues of the Seven Deadly Enemies of Man (5). He is greeted by the wizard Shazam and given a brief tutorial on the meaning of his name (6). Also note the big globe and book flanking the wizard’s throne (7).

    (4) Eventually, this space is revealed to be located in the extradimensional Rock of Eternity, but as of 1940 it’s just a big magic cave that you can just wander into if you start wandering around in the tunnels below the city.

    (5) Pride, Envy, Greed, Hatred, Selfishness, Laziness and Injustice. The names get remixed occasionally – notably the more modern version read more like the Catholic Seven Deadly Sins – but this bunch will eventually get their own entry as minor super-villains after they come to life and battle Captain Marvel.

    (6) Also a quick rundown of the powers of Captain Marvel! Solomon, wisdom of; Hercules, strength of; Atlas, stamina of; Zeus, power of; Achilles, courage of; Mercury, speed of.

    (7) I don’t know if these are ever given a real explanation – I see some claims that the book is Shazam’s Historama but that’s a retcon at best.

    Shazam uses his Historama (8) to reiterate the miserable nature of Billy Batson’s life: orphaned and then chucked out on his ear by his greedy uncle Ebenezer (9).

    (8) See? The book is clearly closed in the same panel as the Historama is active.

    (9) Billy’s terrible uncle is an occasional recurring antagonist, but doesn’t recur as often as I’d expect. 

    Billy is given the power to become Captain Marvel by shouting the word SHAZAM (10), upon which the wizard, his work on Earth complete, is smushed by the symbolic granite block that has until that point hung above his throne on a slender thread (11). 

    (10) Just a classic super-hero bit. Copied ad nauseam.

    (11) I always forget that the wizard Shazam dies in his very first appearance, possibly because he continues to appear as a spectral advisor to Captain Marvel and the entire Marvel Family.

    Returning to his life in Fawcett City (12), Billy manages to finagle a job as an occasionally-roving radio announcer (13) by making a deal with radio magnate Sterling Morris before foiling the schemes of Dr Sivana (14) for the first time. 

    (12) Technically Golden Age Captain Marvel stories pretty clearly take place in New York City and Fawcett City doesn’t really come into being until the DC Comics days, and while I’m normally a dumb stickler for that sort of thing, it just feels right to go with the retcon flow on that particular point.

    (13) Just a great super-hero job, up there with reporter or newspaper photographer in terms of being in the know about developing situations. Too bad it’s not as relevant today as back in the 40s – is Billy an Extreme Vlogger or something nowadays?

    (14) Stay tuned for that guy.

    In conclusion: yes there are a lot of touchpoints in Captain Marvel’s origin, and that’s without all of the later stuff like Mary that would be included right off the bat in later retellings. It’s a rich text. 

    UPDATES:

    Update 1941

    HONOURS:

    Honours – Captain Marvel

    TROPHY ROOM: 

    Trophy Room – Captain Marvel 

  • NOTES – SEPTEMBER 2025

    Honours – Beautia: 

    Beautia Not-Yet-Officially-Sivana wins the Empress of Beauty Contest (Whiz Comics 003b, 1940)

    Later in the year, Beautia saves the US Pacific fleet from being destroyed by Dr Sivana, and gets an unspecified medal from the Navy for it. (Whiz Comics 009, 1940)

    Cops Shooting Unarmed Suspects:

    This California police chief almost blows away Ibis the Invincible for sassing him and is only prevented thanks to ancient Egyptian magic. (Whiz Comics 008, 1940)

    Skeletons With Jobs:

    Soldier skeleton. (Wings Comics 002, 1940)

    the Looming Spectre of Death: 

    (Wings Comics 003, 1940) 

    (Wonderworld Comics 017, 1940) 

    (Wonderworld Comics 018, 1940) 

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 181: THE SWAMP DEVIL

    (Captain Marvel Adventures 005, 1941)

    The Swamp Devil! Part of a couple of fairly populous subgroupings of supercrook: the “kill or scare off folk in order to do a land-grab” type and the “pose as a figure from local legend in order to capitalize on preexisting fear, etc” cohort (a frequently paired duo). Specifically, the Swamp Devil is actually Woggs, an engineer tasked with draining part of the Great Dismal Swamp to create more farmland who is instead flooding nearby farms and using a combination of mind control gas and his monsterized diving rig/ costume to scare off or murder the locals. Later, he plans to return and buy up the fertile farmland cheap.

    I gotta say… this seems like a lot of effort to go to for swamp-adjacent farmland. Most guys who pull this kind of scheme are after a quicker payoff: deposits of oil or precious metals, pearl beds, buried treasure… Sure you can get rich off farming but it’s a lot more of a long-term plot than your average small-time supercrook is geared for – presumably he’s going to have to change his name, right? Or a similar level of obfuscation to cover for the fact that Mr Woggs is back for the land he failed to secure the last time around in his official capacity? Just as well he gets stomped by Captain Marvel, really.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 180: KING OF THE CRATER

    (Captain Marvel Adventures 005, 1941)

    This rockabilly-looking feller is King of the Crater and I like him quite a bit. His plan, as laid out above, is to weaponize a seam of magma that runs under the Rockies and the Andes in order to lay claim to a strip of territory running the length of the Americas. It’s not a bad plan if you subscribe to the attitude that violent conquest is an acceptable means of achieving control over territory. Or that control over territory is a desirable end in itself, I guess. 

    It is a plan that is vulnerable to the supposition that it might just be easier to establish a lucrative monopoly on geothermal power production, of course. Also Captain Marvel. The plan is and was vulnerable to Captain Marvel.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 179: THE BEAST-RULER

    (Captain Marvel Adventures 003, 1941)

    The Beast-Ruler’s origin is simple: for reasons of his own, Dr Sivana builds a human out of animal parts – the muscles of a gorilla, the memory of an elephant and yes, the life-force of a thousand beasts – and that creation promptly rebels and runs off with the remaining beasts that have not had their life-forces squeezed out. A real rookie mistake on Sivana’s part if you ask me – this isn’t his first time toying in God’s domain and he should have lab procedures covering such as a rebellious super-powered humanoid.

    Speaking of super-powers, the Beast-Ruler has ’em (and speaking of names, that’s a bad one). He’s got the full suite of enhanced physical abilities, plus he can communicate with animals, a trait that he quickly uses to organize an army of beasts as a prelude to wiping out humanity. A pretty smart move on the part of the animals, honestly, but Captain Marvel ultimately prevails over this force with the help of other animals who choose to side with the human race.

    The breakdown of the animal armies is interesting: wild animals are all on the Beast-Ruler’s side, while Captain Marvel has dogs, cats and a selection of domesticated farm animals, but not all of them. Sheep are firmly on the side of the Beast-Ruler and the loyalty of pigs and horses seem to be split, with some representation in each army. If we’re honest, most of the pro-humanity animals were fooling themselves, but they manage to distract the more sensible beasts long enough for Captain Marvel to send the Beast-Ruler head first off a waterfall.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 179: THE BEAST-RULER

    (Captain Marvel Adventures 003, 1941)

    The Beast-Ruler’s origin is simple: for reasons of his own, Dr Sivana builds a human out of animal parts – the muscles of a gorilla, the memory of an elephant and yes, the life-force of a thousand beasts – and that creation promptly rebels and runs off with the remaining beasts that have not had their life-forces squeezed out. A real rookie mistake on Sivana’s part if you ask me – this isn’t his first time toying in God’s domain and he should have lab procedures covering such as a rebellious super-powered humanoid.

    Speaking of super-powers, the Beast-Ruler has ’em (and speaking of names, that’s a bad one). He’s got the full suite of enhanced physical abilities, plus he can communicate with animals, a trait that he quickly uses to organize an army of beasts as a prelude to wiping out humanity. A pretty smart move on the part of the animals, honestly, but Captain Marvel ultimately prevails over this force with the help of other animals who choose to side with the human race.

    The breakdown of the animal armies is interesting: wild animals are all on the Beast-Ruler’s side, while Captain Marvel has dogs, cats and a selection of domesticated farm animals, but not all of them. Sheep are firmly on the side of the Beast-Ruler and the loyalty of pigs and horses seem to be split, with some representation in each army. If we’re honest, most of the pro-humanity animals were fooling themselves, but they manage to distract the more sensible beasts long enough for Captain Marvel to send the Beast-Ruler head first off a waterfall.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 178: THE ARSON FIEND

    (Captain Marvel Adventures 002, 1941)

    The Arson Fiend! A simple villain conceptually: fire insurance salesman George D. Tweedle just can’t sell any fire insurance and so he starts what is nominally a protection racket but really seems to be an excuse for wholesale arson.

    The twist in this particular tale is that Tweedle has somehow developed or otherwise gotten his hands on a formula that transforms him into the fire-spewing and fireproof Arson Fiend. Legitimately super-powered crooks being a bit underrepresented at this point, I am delighted by this development! I had honestly expected the Fiend to be an asbestos outfit with a flamethrower concealed in each sleeve. The secondary twist is that Tweedle finds out that Billy is Captain Marvel seemingly without effort, which I love. Finally a comic book character is being held accountable for their poor infosec.

    Sadly, such a being cannot be long for a comics world. The Arson Fiend and Captain Marvel battle atop a large oil tank and it eventually turns out that however immune to fire you are, you still have to look out for the concussive force element of, say, an oil tank explosion if you want a long career in arson.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 177: BRAM THIRLA

    (Captain Marvel Adventures 001, 1941)


    I waffled a bit on this guy – he’s just a regular-style vampire, after all. But a regular-style vampire is like a ninja or a xenomorph (or a knight, a pirate, a robot, etc): a deadly threat super-villain level singly, while also being easily killed when part of a group.

    So: Bram Thirla demonstrates a couple of important safety concerns specific to comic book science. Firstly: if you must combine the practices of science and sorcery, at least do so in proper laboratory conditions, as performing experiments e.g., in a cemetery at midnight not only introduces quite a lot of unintentional variables but limits the ability to pre-plan safety precautions such as escape routes.

    Secondly: when sourcing human remains or brains, go the extra mile and try to get ahold of a nice person’s corpse. Sure it’s easier to bribe the prison morgue attendant to release the body of a recently executed mass murderer to you but now you have a murderer’s brain in your gorilla and that spells trouble. Or in this case: you’ve resurrected the body of a “mysterious and evil man” because nobody would object and now you’re being eaten by a vampire.


    The best part of this story is presented above: Captain Marvel and Bram Thirla are incapable of hurting one another, so are locked in a race against time: can Captain Marvel do enough research on vampires to figure out how to bump off Thirla before Thirla catches him in his Billy Batson form?


    The comic isn’t called Bram Thirla Adventures, so thanks to HP Lovecraft’s seminal work The Vampire Legend, Billy prevails and Thirla is reinterred.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 176: Z

    (Captain Marvel Adventures 001, 1941)

    Z is (spoilers) an android built by Dr Sivana to destroy Captain Marvel. He’s a cool guy and a fun villain: slick, full of attitude, almost powerful enough to do the job. Plus he doesn’t seem to know he’s a robot, which I find to be a fun feature in an android character – it allows for shocking reveals! Z should definitely be BROUGHT BACK, if only as disposable muscle for Sivana. We wuz robbed of a smug android thug slouched over a chair cleaning his nails in the background of every Dr Sivana scene from 1941 on, I say!

    The really interesting thing about Z is the fact that he and Captain Marvel fight three times and each time, Captain Marvel is explicitly trying to kill him. I came into my ongoing “read all comics” project a lot less familiar with the Fawcett end of things so I was pretty bought in to the modern conception of Captain Marvel as some sort of Pure Being of Childlike Innocence and thus it was a lot more jarring to come into the realization that in his early days he was just as likely to resort to deadly force as Batman or Superman, probably a bit less often than the former and more than the latter. Honestly interested to see just when each adopts a code against killing relative to one another.