The Plot Against Humanity
January 2, 1941
By 1941, there was no denying that an irrevocable change had taken place across the globe. The world had gone to sleep and when it woke up the rules were different. People flew on their own power and lifted cars over their heads. Masked crime fighters battled themed villains in the streets. The fantastic, the supernatural was reality. Though the average person had never personally witnessed the superhuman, even in the United States, which held a significant lead in that department, almost everyone had heard a report over the radio or seen pictures in the papers. Stories proliferated. Your neighbor glimpsed Green Lantern overhead when they walked to work the other day. Your aunt's hairdresser was hit with a breeze as the Flash ran by, to stop that robbery on Sixth and Willow. The man behind the counter in the bakery had a front row seat to Black Canary riding by on her motorcycle. Everyone in Gotham had stared up at the night's sky and seen the Bat Signal projected above. All this is to say that there was a higher bar for strangeness in America and the world at large by 1941.
Fawcett City cleared that bar and then some. It didn't appear that way to casual inspection. The locals would tell you it was calm by urban standards right up until the final years of the '30s. Yet, the fate of this place rested in the hands of an orphaned boy with the power of the gods and his battles against a menagerie of madmen and monsters that defied all matter of categorization.
Billy Batson was on the case. The owner of Otto's Electronics, Otto Beck had gone missing, right before the release of their latest state-of-the-art radio set. The cops were dragging their feet in the investigation, but that was no impediment for WHIZ Radio's best (and youngest) reporter. Beck's daughter told Billy about the long nights her father was spending at the factory, along with the phone calls he had been receiving, always late in the evening. The workers told him about how the production line had shut down early, with a new factory creating the order, one contracted to Anavis Inc.
A short bus ride across town to the new factory gave Billy time to think about the past year and a half. He was a long way from the urchin that was sleeping in a Hooverville under a drafty overpass. There were the orphanages when he was younger. The staff were kind, kinder than he heard from others in his situation, but kindness could not alleviate the fact that they were overcrowded and undersupplied. Too many lean months pushed him to the streets. Better to survive on his own. It was what led him to that train ride to the Rock of Eternity. The meeting with the wizard Shazam.
His new home was with the Vasquez family. Victor and Rosa weren't thrilled that he spent his time outside of school working for WHIZ, but they understood how much it meant to Billy. They'd be even less thrilled if they knew if was the perfect cover for his double life. He no longer thought much about his parents. The picture of them holding him and his older sister Mary on a bench at the Fawcett City Zoo was all he had left. Billy wondered more about his sister. He hoped she had found a family that read her stories at night and walked her to school.
The bus spat him out in front of the second most sinister looking factory he'd ever laid eyes on. The name of the Avanis corporation was painted onto the walls in a wicked slant. The windows were tinted black. Billy couldn't pretend to be surprised when he climbed through an open window around the back of the factory and found that it was a front for Dr. Sivana. Armed thugs in matching uniforms boxed and labelled radios marked with a stylized "S" on them that no doubt were the critical piece of Sivana's latest scheme. He would've been disappointed at this point if it was something genuinely mundane.
There was only one thing to say in a time like this:
SHAZAM!
Dr. Thaddeus Sivana was the greatest mad scientist alive. He harnessed the power of science and magic alike. He was the uncredited first astronaut, having made a voyage to both Venus and Mars, finding far more in the former. In the past year his schemes to conquer Fawcett City and later the world included but were not limited to: a ray that converted humans into dogs, two attempts to steal the Federal Reserve's gold, a cloud machine that could poison all plant life, a highly addictive variation of milk, a new day of the week (Sivanaday) on which he was the ruler of the world, a transmitter that made images in mirrors come to life and serve him, the creation of the element Suspendium which could place people in indefinite stasis (it's usage was ruined by the Injustice Society's failed deployment of it) and, most recently, an advertising jingle that would mind control everyone that heard it. All ruined in one way or another by his nemesis the Big Red Cheese. Captain Marvel.
It could not go on like this. Sivana left his control room and the charred spot where had vaporized the henchman that brought him the news that the brilliantly named Avanis corporation and all of his mind-controlling radios had been destroyed by the Captain, in spite of the intervention of the iron golem powered by timeless space crystals from a dimension that Sivana had discovered on Monday. He stomped by the terrarium where his daughter Georgia was in the latest phase of her project to clone dinosaurs and splice them with DNA from her favorite contemporary animals. Past the test chamber where Sivana Jr. and Magnificus argued over the proper yield threshold for a gravitational wave collapser. Through the artifact hall which included such relics as the Golden Fleece of Odysseus, the skeleton of a jabberwocky, a looped recording of a man's trip through what Sivana believed was an anti-matter universe operating in tandem with his own and Thor's hammer.
His trip ended in a cramped room with walls that constituted a shield against every known electronic, radioactive and magical energy known to Sivana. Which was most of them. He approached the stand in the center of the room and pulled off the sheet that covered the glass jar that sat on top of it.
"It's only been forty two days since our previous meetings. These intervals are growing shorter," said a metallic, inhuman voice through the glass sides of the jar.
"I've reconsidered your offer," said Dr. Sivana, through gritted teeth.
"Then you truly are desperate. Humbled by that simpleton," said his prisoner. "You would sell out your own kind."
"Gloat at your own peril. I can always have you fed to a bird," said Sivana.
"I'd give it indigestion. Besides, you need me. You need my associates," said the voice.
"This is a temporary alliance. Till Captain Marvel is defeated. And the world is ours."
"Certainly. If you wouldn't mind removing the jar?"
Sivana lifted it off the stand.
"Better already. To our partnership. I will require transport to your communications equipment. To make the necessary arrangements."
Sivana held out his hand, allowing his new partner to crawl onto it. He stifled the revulsion the act inspired. A better method would be required.
"Lead the way," said Mr. Mind.