Earth S history prior to Captain Marvel

[dans]

What do we know about Earth S history prior to Billy becoming Captain Marvel? In particular, other than Sivana, were there any other scientists who produced super advanced technology? Are there any Earth S stories set in the World War 1 era which feature robots or space ships? I need to have Stuart Blake in the early 1920s build a spaceship and I'm wondering if I might be able to work in some pre-existing technology to make that easier for him? Like, he builds a robot similar to one that has already been shown in a story, or he copies an existing design, or something along those lines. Alternately, are there any known alien visitations to Earth S in that same era, so instead of building a ship, he could hitchhike with the aliens?

Did Fawcett publish any comics prior to 1940 that might be considered part of Earth S continuity?

Is it possible that Stuart Blake knew Sivana before Sivana went bad and was able to adapt some of Sivana's technology? Or, I think Libby suggested that Spy Smasher may have gotten the technology for the gyro sub from Robur; could Blake also have somehow recovered some of Robur's tech? (I in turn suggested in one story that Robur actually stole technology from a young Thaddeus Sivana...) Are there some other forgotten geniuses in Earth S history who developed spaceflight as early as 1920?

Thanks!

[johnreiter902]

My knowledge isn't encyclopedic here, but I'll give you what I know.

Captain Marvel Adventures #138 establishes that Dr. Sivana was born in 1892. The flashback sequence in Whiz Comics #15 shows that Magnificus Sivana was a toddler and Beautia a babe in arms when Dr. Sivana left Earth, and both of them were no younger than 20 in 1940, 18 at the youngest. This means Sivana left Earth for Venus no later than 1922, and probably closer to 1920.

As for other villains, there is an Earth-S version (or equivalent) of Vandal Savage called the Man of Ages, who fought Bulletman in America's Greatest Comics #3, and has been around since the prehistory.

Is it possible he met with a time-traveler? There are possibilities like Doc Wunder from Captain Marvel Adventures #124, or Zotan from Captain Marvel Adventures #52

[dave]

Whiz Comics was Fawcett's initial entrance into comics, But don't forget King Kull's history, Black Adam, as well as a few Western heroes.

[dans]

Well, since it is in a comic that Sivana was born in 1892, in my story, the story Sivana Jr. tells about Robur getting his technology from Sivana must have been either apocryphal family legend or maybe there is a yet-to-be-told tale of time travel involved. Thad did say "There's a lot you don't know about my pop!" at the time, while thinking "There's a lot that even I don't know about my pop..."

[johnreiter902]

Jun 23, 2024 10:58:21 GMT dans said:

Well, since it is in a comic that Sivana was born in 1892, in my story, the story Sivana Jr. tells about Robur getting his technology from Sivana must have been either apocryphal family legend or maybe there is a yet-to-be-told tale of time travel involved. Thad did say "There's a lot you don't know about my pop!" at the time, while thinking "There's a lot that even I don't know about my pop..."

It is not only possible, but (considering his ego) probable that Sivana lies to his children and claims that ALL revolutionary inventions are stolen from him. Thad may in fact be repeating what he was told by his father, but that certainly doesn't mean it is true.

Though Sivana is an accomplished time-traveler, so it is possible that he did go back to the early 19th century and meet Robur at some point.

[dans]

yeah, I'm not too worried about the continuity involved, but I thought I had done a better job of researching Sivana's history when I wrote that story. Oh, well, it was published in 2005 and nobody has brought it up, so I won't worry about it. But I'm not going to work it into my current story either. I do remember a discussion with Doc about Sivana's history - I wanted to have him born around, say, 1840 or so and have initially had a career as a Doc Savage-like adventurer and do-gooder until his first wife died due to the ignorance of the medical profession, after which he turned bad, and Doc was like "Is this a joke?"

[redsycorax]

Okay, so is it tentative continuity* that Mrs Sivana therefore died in the 1918-19 Spanish flu epidemic, given that it might be the only major transnational medical emergency that could fit this timeline? Most of the other major US epidemics in the nineteenth century occurred in specific areas - 1837: Great Plains, smallpox; 1849-1850: Tennessee, cholera; 1853: Southern Gulf Coast, yellow fever: 1862, Pacific Northwest, smallpox. Is there any reason that the Sivanas might be in what are predominantly coastal, rural or underdeveloped hinterland areas, apart from the Pacific Northwest, where there are some cities of note? It would make more sense for him to be in a relative metropolitan setting, probably one of the New England cities, where he could accumulate the capital, chemicals and componentry for his inventions, as well as constant access to reliable electricity supplies. The first electrical power stations in the United States date from the 1880s in the vicinity of New York.

As you can see, Dan, the only epidemics that fit a nineteenth century Sivana adventurer story would be the 1837 Great Plains smallpox epidemic, which is too early, or the 1849-1850 Tennessee cholera epidemic. If you want an Earth-S that doesn't diverge too markedly from our own world when it comes to details like historical epidemiology, then I'd trust Doc's judgement on this one. 1840 is an awkward historical point to have early Sivana activity. My own advice would be to set the events of his wife's death and its aftermath in the context of the 1918-19 flu epidemic, given that it was a major epidemic that hit metropolitan centres, unlike any of the more localised nineteenth century US epidemics listed above. Of course, you could get around that by (a) having a Sivana ancestor taking on the nineteenth century role if you wanted or (b) making it an Earth-S Elseworld.

*We did discuss when and why Sivana headed off to Venus with his children in another thread.  I suggested that  one motivating factor might have been the probable death of Mrs Sivana in the 1918-19 Spanish flu pandemic and Thad's bitterness at the powers that be for not getting a vaccine out there in a time, or implementing public health campaigns or mass vaccination programmes. After all, he now had two children to bring up on his own, without his beloved wife. 

[DocQuantum]

Dan never said anything about a national epidemic. She could have died of anything.

[redsycorax]

Although given the historical context we're talking about, the 1918-19 flu epidemic might be a safe bet. I have a husband who's a GP and I've worked in the New Zealand Ministry of Health myself in the past, so these things interest me. I decided to check out national US mortality statistics in the early twentieth century and this is what I found, though. 46.3% of all female deaths were from pneumonia and influenza, while tuberculosis was secondmost, enteritis and diarrhoea were some way back, trailed by heart disease and stroke.

www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2018/17_0284.htm

As you can see from the above, on the balance of probabilities, Mrs Sivana is most likely to have died from pneumonia or influenza, which would tie in well with the 1918-19 global flu pandemic. Even if she survived the flu pandemic, she might have then caught tuberculosis due to a weakened immune system. I've identified another possible candidate, though, which is a botulism outbreak resulting from poor preparation techniques at a California olive cannery, which killed eighteen people. Perhaps Mrs Sivana was one of those? Or she might have died in the diptheria outbreak of 1925, or from eating contaminated oysters that carried typhus that same year?

Take your pick.

[dans]

My plan at the time (like 20 years ago) was that Sivana's first wife (and perhaps only wife) caught some kind of disease that was incurable at the time, and Sivana figured out how to cure it, but he wasn't a medical doctor, so he wasn't allowed to cure her - and knowing that it was the ignorance of the supposed learned and educated that had killed her, he changed from a good man doing the Doc Savage thing to the World's Wickedest Scientist. In this particular timeline, Sivana was born in Great Britain, and was living in England at the time of his wife's death.

If Sivana had been born in 1840, the death of his wife (who had already given birth to Beautia and Magnificus), would have been in the 1860s or 1870s, which matched up pretty well with Robur. Additionally, I posited that Sivana had created some kind of extended life potion or serum, which gave him greatly extended life span but which altered his physical appearance from looking more like Magnificus to his current appearance. (I also suggested that Thad Jr. and Georgia are clones, and that Sivana did some minor genetic tampering with the clones to make them usefully subservient to him...)

None of this is official canon for us. Much of it _could be_ canon if it were written into a story, rather than just talked about in commentary - or Sivana's history could easily be totally different and include none of the above. At one time, I heard that one of our authors wanted to write the glorious story of Sivana's first courtship - so that might be the story that establishes more of Sivana's history.

Anyway, I decided that the genius of Stuart Blake was enough for him to build his Space Plane on his own. I am pretty sure that his many brief exposures to sunergy radiation actually increased his intelligence a lot, perhaps even to Level 12, even though I haven't mentioned it in my story (yet). So he can accomplish things that are denied to mere mortals, such as building a Space Plane with 1920s technology in less than a year. But he is also possibly a bit mentally unstable. See the next few chapters...

[dans]

My history of Sivana is mostly moot anyway, since John gave us a solid reference for his birth - 1892. That matches pretty well with the timing of the 1918 plague.

I am glad today that I never got around to writing the global do-gooder adventures of Doc Sivana in the 1860s back then. 

[redsycorax]

Let's say something like this might have happened in the nineteenth century Sivana timeline, then. After spending a period in California, the Sivanas find there's a bottleneck in terms of passenger shipping related to routing difficulties during the US Civil War. Thaddeus returns home alone. However, while he is waiting to do so, the Pacific Northwest is hit by the 1862 smallpox pandemic. Mrs Sivana dies of what would otherwise be an incurable disease back then, but Thaddeus has a cure available- but must fight conservative medical authority and hierarchy because he is not a qualified medical practitioner, and so, his wife dies in the interim period.

[dans]

OK, we just created Earth S(D) - the DanS spin-off universe where Sivana was born and grew up in Great Britain in the mid 1800s, and Earth S(R), the redsycorax spinoff universe where Sivana grew up in the Pacific Northwest in the the mid 1800s! 

[redsycorax]

It's a shame that there weren't post-Crisis DC Elseworlds specifically focused on Captain Marvel and the Marvel Family which specifically explored what things might have been like if the Old Wizard had chosen to intervene in terrestrial affairs earlier in human history. We seem to have two nineteenth century ones suggested already!

[dans]

It is an interesting question why Shazam waited until 1940 to sponsor a new super hero (or 2 if you count Master Man). I wonder what it was that convinced him it was finally time? Maybe he knew Black Adam was due back pretty soon and he wanted his new hero to have some experience before encountering his first creation? Or maybe he was horrified that he'd let World War 1 happen, and the start of World War II finally convinced him to stop moping around and get back to work?