Doctor Sivana

71 years ago - Thaddeus Bodog Sivana is born.

58 years ago - 13-year-old Thaddeus Sivana's earliest breakthrough is a device that can detect magic. He is nearly blinded by its activation.

54 years ago - 17-year-old Thaddeus Sivana attends college.

52 years ago - 19-year-old Thaddeus Sivana begins his post-grad work.

51 years ago - 20-year-old Thaddeus Sivana begins several concurrent doctoral programs.

50 years ago - 21-year-old Thaddeus Sivana, awarded with multiple doctorates, begins his most important theorem; scientific proof of magic.

45 years ago - 26-year-old Thaddeus Sivana is married.

38 years ago - 33-year-old Thaddeus Sivana's theorems are completely rejected. He is written off as a madman and slips into despair.

37 years ago - 34-year-old Thaddeus Sivana's wife leaves him.

32 years ago - 39-year-old Thaddeus Sivana remarries, rebuilding his life.

27 years ago - 44-year-old Thaddeus Sivana has Helga Jace as a grad student.

26 years ago - 45-year-old Thaddeus Sivana becomes part of the backbone of the earliest incarnation of H.I.V.E.

24 years ago - 47-year-old Thaddeus Sivana repurposes his research, becoming incredibly wealthy by developing pharmaceuticals.

23 years ago - 48-year-old Thaddeus Sivana's son Magnificus Sivana is born.

22 years ago - 49-year-old Thaddeus Sivana's obsession with harnessing magic to create an immortality serum drives him further insane. His wife leaves him, taking their son Magnificus Sivana.

18 years ago - 53-year-old Thaddeus Sivana creates twin clones of himself, Thaddeus Sivana Jr & Georgia Sivana.

17 years ago - 54-year-old Thaddeus Sivana's abandons H.I.V.E. when the organizations leadership changes.

16 years ago - 55-year-old Thaddeus Sivana constructs his own space saucer and departs for Venus, collecting unique magical radiation as a near-unlimited fuel source, kidnapping and bringing along his son, Magnificus Sivana.

13 years ago - 58-year-old Thaddeus Sivana & his son Magnificus Sivana return from Venus, reestablishing his secret labs.

12 years ago - 59-year-old Thaddeus Sivana, certain of the existence of the Rock of Eternity, funds the Batson's archeological expedition, hoping to find a way to access it.

11 years ago - 60-year-old Thaddeus Sivana is left interpreting the tomb of Teth-Adam after the Batsons are killed.

8 years ago - 63-year-old Thaddeus Sivana attempts to capture or corrupt Captain Marvel to access the Rock of Eternity, continually playing Black Adam and Captain Marvel against each other. As an experiment he funds the creation of his own organization of superhero villains, The Secret Society. They are defeated, but his experiment is successful, collecting massive amounts of data on the Justice League.

6 years ago - 65-year-old Thaddeus Sivana uses Timothy Karnes in an attempt to replicate Captain Marvel's summon, creating Sabbac.

5 years ago - 66-year-old Thaddeus Sivana's son Magnificus Sivana appears to be interested in joining his research, but is revealed to be under the control of Mister Mind, who had lived dormant in his body since his time orbiting Venus.

4 years ago - 67-year-old Thaddeus Sivana acquires the island property once used by H.I.V.E.

3 years ago - 68-year-old Thaddeus Sivana frees the Fearsome Five to stage a worldwide nuclear disaster as a cover for a strike on Kahndaq after Black Adam takes the throne, in an attempt to enrage him. He is stopped by the Outsiders and imprisoned.

2 years ago - 69-year-old Thaddeus Sivana perfects his artificial Rock of Eternity. He tricks his son Magnificus Sivana into saying his name, triggering the rock and becoming Captain Sivana, along with Thaddeus Sivana Jr & Georgia Sivana. they fight Billy Batson, Freddie Freeman & Mary Bromfield until they are all tricked into saying Sivana and depowered.

1 year ago - 71-year-old Thaddeus Sivana becomes a member of the Light.

There's a lot of mad scientists out there. It's a trope with a long history that extends through genre fiction in almost every direction. The very first piece of science fiction ever was a book about a mad scientist and his monster. With that sort of pedigree it would be easy to expect comics to have such a massive catalogue of mad scientist characters that it would be absolutely impossible to suggest that any one of them could possibly be THE mad scientist....

Of course, it isn't. Doctor Sivanna is THE mad scientist. In a medium so thoroughly steeped in the archetype, Doctor Sivanna is unquestioningly the most prominent example of the trope you're ever going to see.

Doctor Sivana's Comic History

Doctor Sivana debuted in 1940 in issue #1 of Whiz Comics. This is ALMOST the debut of Captain Marvel as well... The good Captain debuted in a one-issue black-and-white trashcan issue called Thrill Comics which immediately evolved into Whiz Comics... So while yes, both characters debuted with the publication of Whiz Comics, Cap just had that one extra appearance.

The bulk of Sivana's appearances are all in this classic golden age period, when he was free to just be the most mad scientisty mad scientist to ever mad science. There were, of course, all sorts of shenanigans over the decades as the rights to the Captain Marvel characters were passed around, but after the Crisis of Infinite Earths they all joined the mainstream DC continuity in their miniseries Power of Shazam!, one of the many properties designed to reintegrate all the characters into the new timeline. From this point forward Sivana would make regular appearances on different groups of villains. He became a major character in the series 52, and served as a great foil to the Outsiders. After the New 52 reset the whole of DC continuity, Captain Marvel was reimagined as Shazam, and Sivana was likewise reinterpreted into a more physical character.

Our Doctor Sivana Story

Obviously, we don't want Sivana to be anything other than what he was originally conceived to be. Say it with me: a Mad Scientist. There are plenty of characters in the DC pantheon that use science as their weapon, but there aren't any that manage to so perfectly encapsulate the archetype. Still, we've taken a few ideas from the more recent versions of the character to give him a more Captain Marvel-specific motivation by making him obsessed with finding a connection between Science & Magic, which gives him his own unique role to play in the world. Everything he does, including serving as the founder of our version of the Secret Society, can just be more of his weird science antics.

Wildly, because his archnemesis is actually a teenager and he's a very old man, for the bulk of his history he doesn't technically HAVE an enemy, so we got to fill up his life with all sorts of stuff. We made him a founder of our version of H.I.V.E. but we also dipped into some of the weird old stories, including his construction of a space saucer and going to Venus. We did NOT invent the idea that Sivana funded the expedition that wound up killing Billy Batson's parents, but for some reason that isn't always considered part of his story, and that seems like such a missed opportunity. So much of Captain Marvel's story can be established through the understanding that Sivana is trying to manipulate or control him.

As we move forward, Sivana is one of the members of Vandal Savage's new illuminati-style group of mega-villains, the Light. What comes next with this group could be anyone's guess, but I can guarantee that it's not good.

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