Doctor Sivana
| Doctor Sivana | |
|---|---|
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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 |
| Team affiliations |
Injustice League Fearsome Five The Society Monster Society of Evil Sivana Family Science Squad |
| Notable aliases | The World's Wickedest Scientist |
| Abilities |
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Doctor Thaddeus Bodog Sivana is a fictional character, a 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. Beck has said Parker created Sivana's name by combining the name of the Indian god Siva with the word "nirvana".
Infamously evil, Doctor Sivana appeared in well over half of all of the Golden Age Captain Marvel comic stories, and the first four 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. He was at first a good man who wanted to help humanity, but big business, bosses and other conservative concerns blocked & checked him and even called him mad, until, embittered, he turned against humanity and moved to Venus. He somehow held high status among the beings of the planet Venus. He returned to earth, establishing himself as a villain, and clashed with Capt. Marvel in the latter's first fight. 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.
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, other superheroes, and, by accident, themselves in a sphere of Suspendium, due to Sivana Jr. distracting Doctor Sivana by slapping him on the back in congratulation, 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 and the other Marvels then pushed it back to Earth. The Sivanas escaped in their spaceship, but were captured by Captain Marvel in the same issue despite another attempt at world domination. He still makes many attempts at world domination, including a multi-issue storyline where he traveled across America, threatening to destroy entire cities unless he was acknowledged as Rightful Ruler of the Universe.(Shazam #25 to #29). In Shazam #28 he was responsible for bringing Black Adam back using his reincarnation machine.
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Wikipedia