Doctor Sivana - Fictional Character Biography

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 and was one of Europe's best scientific minds, with progressive scientific ideas that could revolutionize industry but was rejected by everyone he approached. Laughed out of society by people who called his inventions impractical and his science a fake, Sivana took his family to the planet Venus in a spaceship he had invented, where he stayed until his children were grown, and Earth not as backward as when he left it; since his children were adults by 1940, his departure from Earth would implicitly have been the late 1910s or early 1920s. During his years away, struggling to tame the Venusian jungle, Sivana turned bitter and planned his revenge against the world that had shunned him. He initially plotted his revenge with a radio silencer that would disable all radio communications permanently, he tried to extort $50,000,000, only to be stopped by Captain Marvel in his first adventure. Cap broke through the window of the building, and defeated the guards. In a moment both of Sivana's terrified assistants were securely bound with tubing ripped from the radio-silencer. He was apparently killed in Whiz comics #3A when caught in the blast of his Atom-Smasher with which he planned to kill Captain Marvel, but he was delayed from escaping by his returning army which angrily asked why Captain Marvel had defeated them in their war against America despite their highly advanced weaponry while Cap leapt through the window and escaped, but returned next issue, although it is unexplained how he escaped. By then it is implied he had somehow learnt Captain Marvel's identity, using it to lure Captain Marvel to the planet Venus by sending a letter to Batson about the trip and disguising himself as a 'Professor Xerxes Smith'. In Whiz comics #4 he certainly knows Captain Marvel's secret identity, trying to take away his memory while Billy has been bound and gagged by Sivana's two henchmen, but when Billy accidentally says Shazam after he stumbles into the cave where Shazam gave him his power, his memory returns and the Memory Mangler is destroyed in an explosion set off by Sivana's rebellious henchmen. Sivana and Beautia were ironically saved by Cap as the henchmen had left them to die. 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 consider 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)) who when first seen is Empress of Venus and has bewitching beauty which affects men like a drug, which Sivana once used to try to make her win an election, and the Super-strong 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)). Georgia first went to Earth to finish Mary Marvel, after Sivana said he was going after Captain Marvel, and Jr going after Jr. Sivana Jr., and Georgia constituted the super-villain group Sivana Family, the evil counterpart to the Marvel Family (first group appearance: The Marvel Family #10 (April 1947), where they time travel to Ancient, Modern, and Future Atlantis after gaining access to the Rock of Eternity using faster-than-light spaceships, and attempt to steal materials to make a machine which can prevent the Marvels calling their lightning down by creating a barrier around Earth which deflects the lightning, and succeed in capturing, binding and gagging all the Marvels though releasing them to mock them, although the Marvels stop this when they break into the lab and turn off the machine, then capture the unsuspecting Sivanas). They both possess brilliant minds like their father. Magnificus and Beautia, however, were not enemies to the Marvels (although Magnificus fought Cap when he first appeared); in fact, Beautia has an unrequited crush on Captain Marvel (whom she does not realize is really an adolescent boy, Billy Batson although she later realises it).

Following the Crisis on Ininite Earths miniseries, Sivana was first reintroduced as Billy Batson's step-uncle 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. They resemble their Pre-crisis counterparts.