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Post by dans on Jun 29, 2024 19:12:16 GMT
Actually, the question applies both before and after the Suspendium Incident... How did the good guys imprison super powered bad guys on Earth S in the late 40s / early 50s? To be more specific, suppose you are Shiva, and you are fighting a super bad guy who changes from human to his powered form, and you beat him and he turns back to his human form. What do you do with him? If you don't know how he got his powers, how do you keep him from getting them back? The first few times Shiva dealt with authority, it must have been very difficult. Shiva is scary looking... here is his initial description: Where a boy had once stood was now a creature almost seven feet tall, with light blue skin and four arms. A third eye opened on his forehead as his suddenly red hair stood straight up like a bonfire. He wore a chain-mail tunic and armlets of gold I'm sure it was a long time before people started trusting him... in the case above, he is trying to turn the bad guy over to law enforcement and the bad guy is human and Shiva looks like a demon, I'm sure the cops must have thought they were talking to the wrong guy, here... Shiva doesn't have any backup (Squadron of Justice), no mighty fortress of his own where he might imprison a super powered foe (Fortress of Solitude) and nobody knows him - what does he do?
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Post by DocQuantum on Jun 29, 2024 20:36:22 GMT
You’ll have to make it up as you go along, but I think it’s safe to say that Shiva won the public’s trust over time. You could make up a Supermax prison.
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Post by dans on Jun 29, 2024 21:02:25 GMT
You’ll have to make it up as you go along, but I think it’s safe to say that Shiva won the public’s trust over time. You could make up a Supermax prison. Agreed, the original stories make it clear that both Shiva and Kali won the public trust. I don't know if Kali ever did anything in public to lose that trust, though I wrote a couple of stories that show she was becoming really hard to work with - but the only people it affected up until then were Martin, and her teammates on the Super Squad. It's too bad Shazam didn't interact with Shiva more. There is nothing in the Shiva stories to indicate that he ever went to the Rock of Eternity, so that avenue is out. I guess my heroes will just have to figure it out on their own...
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Post by johnreiter902 on Jun 30, 2024 12:04:47 GMT
Actually, the question applies both before and after the Suspendium Incident... How did the good guys imprison super powered bad guys on Earth S in the late 40s / early 50s? To be more specific, suppose you are Shiva, and you are fighting a super bad guy who changes from human to his powered form, and you beat him and he turns back to his human form. What do you do with him? If you don't know how he got his powers, how do you keep him from getting them back? Unless the heroes arranged a special imprisonment of their own for the villain, conventional authorities simply did what they could to imprison them in conventional prisons, often with poor success.
A great example of this is Dr. Sivana. In the golden age, he usually escaped prison within hours of being arrested by Captain Marvel. If he stayed longer than that, it was only because he wanted the peace and quiet to think about his next plan. The authorities set up a special "rocket docket" to bring him to trial within one of being arrested, and even then he only stayed in prison long enough to stand trial twice.
EDIT: This is not to say that the authorities were mooks either. They did the best they could. In Captain Marvel Adventures #127 (1951), standard procedure is to keep Sivana at gun point every minute, waking and sleeping.
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Post by lawrencelliberty on Jun 30, 2024 14:02:40 GMT
Perhaps, there is a Marvelium prison built somewhere by Captain Marvel with approval from the U.S. government.
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Post by dans on Jun 30, 2024 16:16:36 GMT
Perhaps, there is a Marvelium prison built somewhere by Captain Marvel with approval from the U.S. government. Very good, I like that! Probably Shiva wouldn't have authorization to deliver prisoners there the first few times he went into action, in fact it may be top secret and the general public isn't even aware exists. It may take a while before Shiva gains the trust of the legal system and they tell him about it.
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Post by johnreiter902 on Jun 30, 2024 16:44:05 GMT
Perhaps, there is a Marvelium prison built somewhere by Captain Marvel with approval from the U.S. government. As of the 1970s, we see that the Sivanas are being kept in a Marvellium cell, so this is a very good idea. Probably, Captain Marvel built the prison right before he was trapped in suspendium
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Post by redsycorax on Jun 30, 2024 23:04:34 GMT
Shiva and Kali look like Indian deities, so perhaps during the period in which they were active, there might have been op-eds in US and other western media from Indian diaspora commentators arguing that both deities did have positive aspects in Hindu theology and explaining them to westerners. I imagine they might have scared criminals, particularly those of Indian descent, but there might also have been an upsurge in Hindu devotion to those deities amongst the Indian diaspora. It wouldn't be so evident in the United States, but it would be if they ventured into the British Commonwealth, particularly amongst first generation Indian diaspora migrant communities.
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Post by dans on Jul 1, 2024 10:50:10 GMT
I actually put something like that into my story... about Shiva having different aspects, one of which is the God of Creation... I am trying to show he has some abilities Captain Marvel didn't as well, which are drawn more from the Hindu deities.
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Post by redsycorax on Jul 1, 2024 22:49:00 GMT
Another touch might be an incidental reference to devout Hindus placing talismans, statuettes and flowers where Shiva and Kali have been active.
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Post by DocQuantum on Jul 1, 2024 23:46:58 GMT
Maybe cultists might do that. I doubt Shiva and Kali would be accepted by Hinduism at large as the real deal, especially since they are very American in every way except appearance.
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Post by dans on Jul 2, 2024 0:03:25 GMT
I don't know much about Sanatana Dharma (the Hindu religion) and I don't want to accidentally offend someone by adding stuff to the story that I know nothing about. I wish we had an author who was familiar enough with it to write some stories about the pair and add that kind of context. It would be interesting to explore why Shazam chose Martin Martine to give the "Bevisog" powers to - does Martin have some connection with the timeless eternal truths that we don't know about?
TBH, I don't even know how closely the descriptions of Shiva and Kali from CSyphrette's stories (which I chose to reuse almost verbatim) match up with the actual Hindu deities of the same names, although it is probably not relevant that they match - from the reading I have done, Shiva and Kali both have many different aspects and their appearance in each aspect might be different.
I wonder if there ARE groups on Earth S during that time period that view Shiva and Kali as the actual deities come to Earth, and other groups who despise them as blasphemous pretenders? The presence of such groups, and conflicts between them, might make a good story...
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Post by redsycorax on Jul 2, 2024 1:08:46 GMT
In response to your last question, Dan, I think it's an excellent idea. Hinduism is a global and historical faith, with many variations over the centuries and millennia. In multimedia terms, it is highly adaptable and its sagas have featured notably in Bollywood epic films and television series. So yes, some might view Shiva and Kali as modern incarnations of those deities, come to Earth, 'proving' the truth of their particular faith, while others might view them as too divergent from traditional understandings of the deities and as blasphemous, heretical pretenders. Some Indian-Americans might be quite willing to accept Shiva and Kali as modern, more readily comprehensible incarnations of the gods, for that matter, particularly second or third generation Indian-Americans. And elsewhere in the world, they'd be even more willing, given the history of the Indian diaspora within the British Commonwealth in particular. Older, first generation Indian diaspora community figures might not be so willing.
However, like Buddhism, but unlike Christianity and Islam, Hinduism has no central religious authority, so there may not be any one opinion as a result.
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Post by dans on Jul 2, 2024 1:30:55 GMT
Some time ago, I created a (no longer secret) organization called the International Sisterhood of Isis Servants on Earth 2, who chose to worship the superheroine Isis as the actual goddess returned to Earth (she is not the goddess, she is a human with powers). The Sisterhood was becoming so notorious that the E2 Isis changed her name to Zephyr.
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Post by redsycorax on Jul 2, 2024 2:09:56 GMT
That would make sense too. Back in ancient Rome, Isis was a major deity in her own right, and at one time, her faith represented a contender against Christianity and Mithraism for religious dominance over the Empire. However, Isaicism and Mithraism both had weaknesses- the gender of their adherents. Isaicism strongly attracted women, while Mithraism attracted male soldiers. While some fusion of the two might have worked, Christianity had an advantage given that it appealed to both sexes. So, it's entirely possible that the ancient Isaic faith might have survived into modernity, especially given the greater strength of magic on Earth-Two.
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