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Shazam! Vol 1 14

"The Evil Return of the Monster Society": Sivana reads in the newspaper about a crook whom Uncle Marvel just captured, and rages about the persecution of his peers. To her surprise, Georgia finds Mister Mind in her apple, who visits his old ally with the idea of resurrecting the Monster Society

A purse-snatcher plying his pernicious trade in broad daylight! Shazam!
— Uncle Marvel

Shazam! #14 is an issue of the series Shazam! (Volume 1) with a cover date of October, 1974.

Synopsis for "The Evil Return of the Monster Society"

Sivana reads in the newspaper about a crook whom Uncle Marvel just captured, and rages about the persecution of his peers. To her surprise, Georgia finds Mister Mind in her apple, who visits his old ally with the idea of resurrecting the Monster Society of Evil. The villainous family teams up with Mind and soon Ibac also arrives, and they set out to destroy the Marvels with a new and improved Death-Ray. The Monster Society challenges the Marvels who quickly arrive to battle, even Uncle Marvel who has been totally absorbed in reading about mythology for some time now. Mister Mind unleashes the death ray that transmits all their evil energy onto the targets, but the Marvels negate it by thinking about positive things, the Monster Society is beaten, but not defeated as the clumsy uncle gets kidnapped by Sivana during the tussle. Back in his HQ, Sivana kicks in frustration the small model of Mind’s Death-Ray, and the mind-reading cap of the machine slips into the head of Uncle Marvel, who has nightmares about the creatures he read about, and Sivana so the machine produces a ‘dream image’ of mythological creatures with the head of Sivana. The rest of the Marvels are unable to cope with the intangible images, but Billy has an idea, he sends Freddy to the library to fetch a book about them, and he with Mary distracts Sivana with a false surrender, so Junior has time to switch the book in Uncle’s hand. The machine now creates dream images of the Marvels, which can defeat the monsters, even Uncle getting a piece of the super-action.

Appearing in "The Evil Return of the Monster Society"

Featured Characters:

Supporting Characters:

Antagonists:

Other Characters:

  • An Imaginary Marvel Family (Destroyed)

Locations:

Items:

  • The Improved Death-Ray (Destroyed)
    • The Monster-Creating Death-Ray (Destroyed)

Vehicles:




Synopsis for "The Prophetic Book!"

This story is reprinted from Captain Marvel Adventures #57.

A professor discovers a book which predicts the exploits of Captain Marvel. A publisher steals the book from the professor in order to sell the chapters to the local paper. Captain Marvel puts a stop to the release of any more installments, and the publisher is arrested for larceny. Checking out the book for himself, Captain Marvel realizes it knows about his exploits is because it was published in 1977. Following the professor's directions to where he found the book, they discover it belonged to a time-traveler from the 70s whose ship crashed, killing him on impact.

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Appearing in "The Prophetic Book!"

Featured Characters:

Supporting Characters:


Antagonists:

  • Samuel Stone, publisher
  • A Couple of Crooks

Other Characters:

  • Professor Joel Brompton
  • A Detective Guard

Locations:

Items:

  • Exploits of Captain Marvel (book)

Vehicles:



Synopsis for "The Man Who Lived History!"

This story is reprinted from Captain Marvel, Jr. #83.

Jeremy Thremm is a local librarian who keeps meticulous records and starts to read history books to escape from the plagues of the modern day. However, while thinking about the Battle of Gettysburg one day… Freddy Freeman sees him suddenly disappear! He calls CAPTAIN MARVEL to try to find him and finds he’s missing entirely and reports it to Officer Jim Bellows… only to find that Jeremy’s back when he returns. Junior is shocked to find that Jeremy now has a program from the Gettysburg Ceremony (guest-featuring Edward Everett) and Junior decides to keep a close eye on him. Later, Jeremy tests his newfound powers and reads a book about the French Revolution, disappearing once Junior tries to walk into his window and Junior this time figures out… that he’s transported himself back in time! To that end, Junior flies off to hang off the Rock of Eternity to return to July 14, 1789, where they are storming the Bastille and assume that mild-mannered Jeremy Thremm is probably an aristocrat “in disguise” and is soon arrested and sent to see Mme. Guillotine. Junior finds him and rescues him from the blade by punching out a man in a Phrygian cap and openly saying the French Revolution was justified! Junior finds Jeremy has disappeared and returned to the present.

Later, Jeremy ends up going back to 1492 to the crew of the Santa Maria where Cristoforo Columbo is sailing to the New World. Two mutineers decide that Capt. Columbo is crazy and attack Jeremy when he asks them to maybe not kill him. They soon run afoul of a nearby reef before they can and Captain Marvel, Jr. flies in to push the reef out of the way and punches out the two evil sailors just before Cristoforo Columbo discovers land. Back at the library, Junior tells Jeremy maybe going back in time is a bad idea, but Jeremy says he’ll keep doing it anyways. The next day, Freddy notes he was reading a book on the origin of the Solar System and wonders if he’ll ever truly come back, though he’s sure he’ll have wonderful tales to tell about it.

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Appearing in "The Man Who Lived History!"

Featured Characters:

Supporting Characters:

  • Jeremy Thremm, Quiet Librarian

Antagonists:

  • French Revolutionaries
  • Two Mutineers

Other Characters:

Locations:

Items:

  • History Books

Vehicles:

Synopsis for "Mr. Tawny's Fight for Fame"

This story is reprinted from Captain Marvel Adventures #126.

Mr. Tawky Tawny has become disgruntled with his normal routine and patter and no one will read his dry book about animal habits. He decides he wants to be famous and, when Billy Batson shows up, decides to have him help him do so. Billy shows him a Daily newspaper offering a scientist who worked for 20 years and got acclaim from his fellows and a much larger story about “Shipwreck” McKellar breaking the flagpole sitting record. Mr. Tawny takes the wrong lesson and thinks he needs to do something big and crazy and the next day, Billy announces on Station WHIZ that Mr. Tawny intends to go over the Highstone Falls without a barrel at noon! Billy naturally decides to go and see to try to stop him and calls SHAZAM to summon Captain Marvel. However, he finds that Mr. Tawny is able to slide down the falls without killing himself and splashes into the water, so Captain Marvel instead flies him back up and says that the cheap hero worship won’t last as long as real admiration. Next, Mr. Tawny tries to use a giant seesaw on a boat to jump up on to the Brooklyn Bridge, the opposite of Steve Brody’s famed jump off of it!

However, Mr. Tawny finds he’s overshot the bridge entirely and Captain Marvel has to set him down before he lands. “Daredevil” Tawny soon decides to fire himself from one cannon into another cannon (finding the loaded spring inside is very hard) before it just dumps him on the ground. However, Billy shows him that people don’t care by upstaging him, floating down from the roof of Station WHIZ with roughly 30 balloons attached to his shoulders, which buoy him down softly. To help him feel better as he goes home in despair, Billy invites some scientists over and they look at Mr. Tawny’s manuscript, saying that he’s a patient, plodding genius and offer to take it to publication and he’s a scientist for the millennium. Mr. Tawny is happy to find that he’s become famous that he put effort into and Billy is happy he learned his lesson.

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Appearing in "Mr. Tawny's Fight for Fame"

Featured Characters:

Supporting Characters:

Antagonists:


Other Characters:

  • "Shipwreck" McKellar (Mentioned only)

Locations:

Items:

  • A Giant See-Saw
  • Two Human Cannons

Vehicles:



Synopsis for "Curse of the Books!"

This story is reprinted from Mary Marvel #2.

A rare book auctioneer has to sell his valuable books, but he wants the money and the books, so he scares his victims by wearing weird disguises in order to steal back his collection from the high bidders.

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Appearing in "Curse of the Books!"

Featured Characters:

Supporting Characters:

  • Josua Joad
  • John Elson

Antagonists:

  • Arthur Archer

Other Characters:


Locations:


Items:


Vehicles:



Synopsis for "The Magic Mix-Up"

This story is reprinted from Captain Marvel Adventures #102.

A professor buys a used black magic book and begins mumbling some of the spells as he walks home, mocking the idea that any of them can actually conjure magic. Billy is nearby and changes to Captain Marvel to fight off the demons, living statues and other dangers the professor unwittingly summons. Confronting him, Cap fails to get him to believe anything happened, and the professor reads off a spell to prove the book doesn't contain any real magic powers. When nothing happens Cap starts to wonder if something else was the cause of the monsters he fought.

The last spell actually did create another danger: it summoned the evil wizard who wrote the book back from Hell, and he steals it from the professor in his sleep. Cap shows up, attempting to sneak into the professor's house so he can examine the book for himself, only to spot the wizard flying away on the back of a dragon. The wizard summons hordes of monsters to stop Cap, but they don't even slow down the World's Mightiest Mortal. Realizing he's faced with a foe he can't defeat, the wizard uses his last resort, a spell that sends him back to Hell. This leaves all the other spells in the book powerless so Cap gives it back to the professor, who remains unconvinced anything strange happened at all.

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Appearing in "The Magic Mix-Up"

Featured Characters:

Supporting Characters:

  • Prof. Tweedle

Antagonists:

  • Afreet Uglah
    • Green Demon
    • Dancing Skeleton
    • Animate Racist Statue
    • Wyvern

Other Characters:


Locations:

Items:

  • Ye Arts of Black Magic by Afreet Uglah, 1549

Vehicles:



Synopsis for "The Word Wrecker!"

This story is reprinted from The Marvel Family #86.

King Kull becomes an arsonist and burns down several libraries. hoping to destroy human knowledge. The Marvels decide to wait in their civilian forms for a train carrying books to stop Kull attacking it. However instead of using incendiary bombs he pushes a boulder in front of the train. The Marvels are knocked out in the crash. Kull then piles up the books for burning, and leaves the bound and gagged children on the bonfire. However Billy burrow into the books followed by the other two. He finds an old book bound in metal scrollwork, with which the children hook their gags off enabling them to transform. Kull then tries to use a paper magnet to steal books. The Marvels save their city from this. They find Kull trying this in another city and destroy the magnet, however then have to stop the paper burying the city. However Kull has hidden an incendiary bomb among the books, which will destroy the city. But the Marvels get to the water main and put out the fire, then clear the books before the people can suffocate. Kull's next plan is to fast-breeding bookworms. However the Marvels foil by breeding organisms that destroy the worms. While they spread it over the world Kull tries to attack them but they use the empty tank to destroy his ship. Kull is jailed.

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Appearing in "The Word Wrecker!"

Featured Characters:

Supporting Characters:


Antagonists:

Other Characters:


Locations:

Items:

  • King Kull's Paper Magnet (Destroyed)
  • A Book on Biology
  • A Book titled The Triumph of Good over Evil (Destroyed)
  • King Kull's Worm Bombs
  • A Paper Airplane

Vehicles:

  • King Kull's Rocket-Ship (Destroyed)

Notes

Trivia

  • This version of the Monster Society of Evil never returns, being replaced by a much stronger third one beginning in World's Finest Comics# 264 and an unrelated one made of strange villains in All-Star Squadron# 51
  • The issue's first story comes in two chapters:
    • Chapter I - The Meeting of the MONSTERS!
    • Chapter II - The MONSTERS are Coming! The MONSTERS are Coming!


See Also

Recommended Reading

Links and References