| Doctor Sivana | |
|---|---|
 Doctor Sivana, from Outsiders #14 (September 2004). Art by Tom Raney. |
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| Publication information | |
| Publisher | Fawcett Comics (1940 - 1953) DC Comics (1972 - present) |
| First appearance | Whiz Comics #2 (1940, historical) The Power of Shazam! graphic novel (1994, canon) |
| Created by | Bill Parker C. C. Beck |
| In-story information | |
| Alter ego | Thaddeus Bodog Sivana, Ph. D |
| Team affiliations | Injustice League Fearsome Five The Society Monster Society of Evil Sivana Family Science Squad |
| Notable aliases | The World's Wickedest Scientist |
| Abilities | Genius-level intellect, brilliant inventor, skilled manipulator and strategist |
Doctor Thaddeus Bodog Sivana is a fictional comic book supervillain. Created by Bill Parker and C. C. Beck, he first appeared opposite superhero Captain Marvel in Whiz Comics #2 (February 1940) by Fawcett Comics. Sivana was soon established as Captain Marvel's archenemy and most frequent foe, a role that he continues to hold to this day in his appearances in DC Comics, who eventually acquired the rights to those characters from Fawcett. In 2009, Doctor Sivana was ranked as IGN's 82nd Greatest Comic Book Villain of All Time.[1][2]
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Publication history
Fawcett Comics and pre-Crisis DC Comics
Doctor Sivana appeared in well over half of all of the Golden Age Captain Marvel comic stories, after having deduced Captain Marvel's dual identity as boy radio broadcaster Billy Batson early on. Depicted as a brilliant, if evil, scientist, Sivana used all manner of unusual inventions and techniques against the Marvels. Along with the Marvel Family, Sivana entered publishing limbo in 1953, following a ruling in the National Comics Publications v. Fawcett Publications court case finding that Captain Marvel was an illegal infringement of Superman.
In 1972, National Comics (today DC Comics) acquired the rights to the Captain Marvel characters, relaunching them in a new title, Shazam! the following February. The characters' twenty-year absence from publication was explained as the result of Doctor Sivana and the Sivana Family having trapped the Marvels, their friends, and, by accident, themselves in a sphere of Suspendium, due to Sivana Jr. distracting Doctor Sivana and making him crash the spaceship into the Suspendium sphere, a compound that kept them in suspended animation from 1953 until 1973. They were released when the Suspendium sphere neared the Sun, melting it enough that Captain Marvel was revived, he pushed it back to Earth.
Shazam! The New Beginning and The Power of Shazam!
Sivana continued to appear in Shazam!-related stories through the Crisis on Infinite Earths limited series in 1985. He was reintroduced by Roy Thomas and Tom Mandrake in the miniseries Shazam! The New Beginning in 1987. This Sivana was the same mad scientist that the previous one had been, except that he only had two children (Beautia and Magnificus), and was Billy Batson's step-uncle.
Jerry Ordway revised the character of Sivana for his 1994 graphic novel The Power of Shazam! and the resulting ongoing series, and this revision has been retained in all following DC publications. The modern Sivana, in addition to being a mad scientist, was also a powerful and influential tycoon (a la Lex Luthor of the Superman comics). The former CEO of his own Sivana Industries, Sivana's corrupted dealings and crossing of Captain Marvel led to his own destruction and his intense hatred of the Marvel Family. Beautia and Magnificus Sivana are reintroduced again in this series; their mother, Sivana's ex-wife Venus, is briefly seen in Power of Shazam! #27.
Later appearances
After The Power of Shazam! series ended in 1999, Sivana was rarely seen until Outsiders #13 -15 (August-October 2004), in which he reorganizes the supervillain group the Fearsome Five, appointing himself leader. Sivana and his four associates Mammoth, Psimon, Jinx, and Shimmer (a fifth, Gizmo, is killed by Sivana for challenging the scientist's position as resident genius) continued to appear at irregular intervals in the pages of Outsiders.[3]
The evil scientist appears briefly in DC's Infinite Crisis. Sivana also recently appeared along with Lex Luthor in the four-issue 2005 limited series Superman/Shazam: First Thunder by Judd Winick and Joshua Middleton, which depicts the first meeting between Superman and Captain Marvel.
In the 2006-2007 limited series 52, Sivana was abducted to Oolong Island, a tropical paradise run by Intergang, where he and many other DC Universe "mad scientists" are allowed to live a hedonistic lifestyle while creating the inventions of their wildest dreams and pitting them against one another.[2] Georgia and Thaddeus Jr. were reintroduced in 52 Week Twenty-Six (November 1, 2006), in which they appear alongside Beautia, Magnificus, and their mother Venus.
Dr. Sivana turned out to be indirectly responsible for the main conflict of 52: disruptions in the fictional time stream caused by a mutated Mr. Mind. Sivana had captured Mind, a worm who happened to be another of Captain Marvel's villains, and the scientist had bombarded it with treatments of Sivana's own "Suspendium" time-travel compound. As a result, Mr. Mind mutated (Or, according to himself, matured - as he had apparently been in larval form all this time) into a "hyperfly", a (sometimes) planet-sized moth-like figure with the ability to travel in time and across realities, posing a serious threat to the Multiverse.[2]
Countdown to Final Crisis
On the cover of Justice League of America #13 (Vol.2), it shows Doctor Sivana as a member of the new Injustice League. Doctor Sivana is one of the villains featured in Salvation Run.
Final Crisis
In Final Crisis, he is placed on the new Society's inner circle by Libra. In Final Crisis #5, Doctor Sivana was with Libra when Calculator was accused of sending computer codes that would help the resistance. In Final Crisis #6, Sivana joins with Lex Luthor in betraying Libra, after being made to watch one of his own daughters succumb to the Anti-Life Equation. Sivana creates a device to shut down the Justifiers helmets, allowing Luthor to attack Libra.
Doctor Sivana later shows up as a member of Cheetah's Secret Society of Super Villains.[4]
Fictional character biography
Sivana is a short, bald, self-described mad scientist with a penchant for developing unusual technologies, and who often plots to do away with Captain Marvel and his Marvel Family, but is often thwarted in his plans. His trademark phrases are "Curses! Foiled again!" and his mocking laughter "Heh! Heh! Heh!" He also coined the insulting name Big Red Cheese to refer to Captain Marvel, a name that the Captain's friends have adopted with which to light-heartedly tease him.
According to The Origin of Dr. Sivana (Whiz Comics #15, March 1941), he began with the best intentions, with progressive scientific ideas that could revolutionize industry but was rejected by everyone he approached. Laughed out of society, Sivana took his family to the planet Venus, where he stayed until his children were grown, and Earth not as backward as when he left it. During his years away, struggling to tame the Venusian jungle, Sivana turned bitter. He initially plotted his revenge with a radio silencer that would disable all radio communications permanently,he tried to extort $50000000, only to be stopped by Captain Marvel in his first adventure. This began his own long enmity with the Marvel Family while still nursing his megalomaniacal grudge against humanity so intensely that even his later winning of the Nobel Prize for Physics, due to Captain Marvel revealing his benevolent inventions he himself considered useless, was not enough to placate him. In fact, he was insulted by the prize and reiterated that only when he was crowned Ruler of the Universe would he considered himself properly honored.
The Golden Age Sivana was a twice-widowed father with four children: good-natured adult offspring Beautia (first appearance: Whiz Comics #3 (April, 1940)) and Magnificus (first appearance: Whiz Comics #15 (March, 1941)), and evil teenagers Georgia (first appearance: Mary Marvel Comics #1 (January, 1946)) and Thaddeus Sivana, Jr. (first appearance: Captain Marvel Adventures #52 (December, 1945)). Sivana Jr., and Georgia constituted the supervillain group Sivana Family, the evil counterpart to the Marvel Family (first group appearance: The Marvel Family #10 (April, 1947)). Magnificus and Beautia, however, were not enemies to the Marvels; in fact, Beautia has an unrequited crush on Captain Marvel (whom she does not realize is really an adolescent boy, Billy Batson).
Following the Crisis on Ininite Earths miniseries, Sivana was first reintroduced as Billy Batson's stepuncle in a 1987 miniseries, Shazam! The New Beginning. Magnificus and Beautia were depicted as his only children.
A second retcon in 1994 established Sivana as a wealthy tycoon with political influence, similar to Lex Luthor, only to have the events surrounding an archaeological expedition to Egypt he sponsored lead to both the creation of Captain Marvel and the fall of Sivana's fortunes. Blaming Captain Marvel for his fall from grace, Sivana dedicates himself wholeheartedly to using his inventions and intellect against the Marvel Family. In current continuity, Sivana's ex-wife Venus is still alive, as are all four Sivana children.
Other versions
In Superman: Red Son, Dr. Sivana briefly appears as a United States defector to Superman's Russia.
In Jeff Smith's 2007 limited series Shazam! The Monster Society of Evil, Sivana is introduced in issue #2, as the new Attorney General of the United States. While ostensibly dedicated to stomping out terrorist threats, Sivana is more interested however in gaining technology from the invading alien Mr. Mind to develop into weapons, and to use the fear caused by the Mind's Monster Society to start a new war he can profit from. He is eventually caught on live TV throwing Mary Marvel from the top of one of Mr Mind's war machines, and is arrested. The series is a critique of the Bush administration and the War on Terrorism.[citation needed]
Dr. Sivana made a cross-company cameo in Marvel Comics' Amazing Spider-Man #335, in which he fights Captain America at a staged charity battle.
In Brazilian Portuguese this character was named "Dr. Silvana".
Dr. Emil Gargunza, a major antagonist in Miracleman (né Marvelman), is based on Dr. Sivana. In Alan Moore's retcon, Gargunza is a super-genius who elevated himself from childhood poverty through crime, then became a scientist. He created the Miracleman family at the behest of the British government with alien technology recovered from a crashed vessel. All of their Golden Age fights (including ones against Gargunza) were hallucinations induced by him to program their minds. Miracleman eventually acknowledges Gargunza as his "father", then kills him.
Dr. Sivana will appear in Billy Batson and the Magic of Shazam!. Mike Kunkle's design differs greatly from other versions: He's actaully taller than Billy and Mary Batson.
Lex Luthor refers to Sivana in Kingdom Come (comics) as the source of the mind altering worms used to induce schizophrenia on Captain Marvel.
Other media
Doctor Sivana first appeared outside of comics in live-action, as a villain in Legends of the Superheroes (1979), played by Howard Morris. He later appeared as a regular villain, occasionally with Sivana Jr. and Georgia, in the 1981 Shazam! Saturday morning cartoon, aired as one-half of The Kid Superpower Hour with Shazam! Although Sivana never appeared in Justice League Unlimited, he does appears as a villain in issue 15 of the Justice League Unlimited comic book, when he tried to rebuild Mister Atom.
Doctor Sivana has a cameo appearance in the animated film Justice League: The New Frontier. He is seen during the famous speech by John F. Kennedy.
In the Superman cartoon "The Magnetic Telescope" by Fleischer Studios, the astronomer who built the titular device and as a result threatened the city strongly resembled Dr. Sivana.
References
- ^ Doctor Sivana is number 82 IGN. Retrieved 10-05-09.
- ^ a b c Greenberger, Robert (2008), "Doctor Sivana", in Dougall, Alastair, The DC Comics Encyclopedia, New York: Dorling Kindersley, pp. 106, ISBN 0-7566-4119-5, OCLC 213309017
- ^ Greenberger, Robert (2008), "Fearsome Five", in Dougall, Alastair, The DC Comics Encyclopedia, New York: Dorling Kindersley, pp. 120, ISBN 0-7566-4119-5, OCLC 213309017
- ^ Wonder Woman Vol. 3 #30
External links
- Doctor Sivana's "Who's Who" file at The Marvel Family Web
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