Friday, June 22, 2018

The Blue Boy Scout and the Big Red Cheese - DC Comics Presents Annual 3

DC Comics Presents Annual 3
Cover and interior: Gil Kane
Writer: Roy Thomas with Julius Schwartz and Gil Kane

Superman battles a giant robot tearing up New York.  Using his X-Ray vision, he sees Dr. Sivana inside.  Superman destroys the robot but Sivana escapes in the head, flying back to the Rock of Eternity.

Sivana reveals that he has Shazam in his power and taunts Captain Marvel until Billy Batson says the magic word and most of the power goes to Captain/Major/Colonel/General Sivana!  Sivana syphons off most of the Marvel Family's power, beating down Captain Marvel and trapping him in a cave under the Rock of Eternity.

Sivana tangles with the Marvel Family and uses the Rock of Eternity to escape.  Not wanting Superman to interfere with his plans, Sivana goes gunning for the Man of Steel and winds up on Earth 2. 

Sivana defeats (!) the Superman of Earth-2 and chains him to an asteroid with Kryptonite before heading to Earth-1 to fight that Superman.  Damn, Sivana has some set of balls on him.

Sivana and Superman duke it out and Sivana whips out the Kryptonite.  Superman weakened, Sivana puts on the Kryptonite knucks and beats the shit out of Superman while Captain Marvel has his Spider-Man moment under the Rock of Eternity and busts out.

As Sivana prepares to deliver the death blow, Captain Marvel attacks him and slams him into the Rock of Eternity, waking up Shazam.  Superman is able to save the Earth-2 Superman and Shazam shows up to strip Sivana of his powers.  The Marvel Family take Sivana off to Earth-S so he can escape to fight another day.

After decades of seeing Captain Marvel repeatedly playing second banana to Superman, this was really good!  Sivana handed two Supermen their asses using Cap's powers and Cap was the one to save the day despite being severely weakened.  Not a bad day for the Big Red Cheese.

The storyline was simple but still good.  A villain lusting for power never goes out of style.  Gil Kane's are was top notch, although his Clark Kent looks about 20 years older than his Superman.  This makes me want to dig out the other three DC Comics Presents Superman/Captain Marvel team-ups I have in the long boxes.





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