| Synopsis
| - Narrated by Billy Batson: "Captain Marvel has battled some horrible and monstrous enemies in his career of fighting for the right! But, natural or supernatural, none has ever been a tougher adversary than … his own shadow !! It all began when Professor “Edgewise” Smith, that rattle-brained rover in the realm of subconscious psychology, got to feeling sorry for his own shadow . . . "
Billy Batson’s valet, Steamboat, is walking home from a scary movie when he’s startled and frightened by his own shadow. Recovering his poise, Steamboat gives the shadow a Bronx cheer, just to show he’s not afraid of it, but instead of matching his motion, the shadow pauses, THEN gives Steamboat a Bronx cheer, and an audible one at that, right back. Steamboat sprints back home and hides under the bed. Billy asks and gets told what’s going on, and isn’t buying it at all, “A shadow can’t do anything you don’t do! When you move it has to move the same way!” Then he leaves the room, but his shadow stays right where it was. When he sees this, Billy vows to find out who’s making this happen, while his shadow taunts him, verbally, until they’re interrupted by the terrified hollering of Professor Smith, who runs into Billy’s apartment through the open front door, scared out of his wits. Questioned by Billy, he starts to tell about what’s going on with the shadows, when his own shadow, joined by Billy’s, make menacing moves and talk amongst themselves about shutting the old guy up. So Billy goes all SHAZAM and grabs the professor and Steamboat and flies them out of there.
Up in the empty air where no shadows are present, Captain Marvel encourages Professor Smith to continue his explanation, which is that, as a researcher into the subconscious mind, he was contemplating his own shadow as an extension in two dimensions of … WAH! Smith suddenly notices that Steamboat is Black, and mistakes him for one of the shadow figures, and flinches so hard that he pops loose from Captain Marvel’s grip, and falls quite a few feet before Marvel is able to catch him again, then goes back to explaining his mental experiment, in which something went wrong, and Smith can’t remember what, but now all the shadows seem to be coming to life.
Marvel lands the three of them on the circular roof of a lighthouse, with a rotating bright light, with a wall around its perimeter, onto which their shadows are cast, and he tells old Edgewise Smith to keep running, in the revolving path of that light beam, with his shadow right next to him, until he thinks of a way out of this problem. Then he takes Steamboat and flies away, while Smith follows those instructions.
Marvel lands on a sidewalk next to a brick wall, and he and Steamboat walk away, but their shadows stay behind. Captain Marvel’s shadow had decided that it’s up to him to lead all of the rest of the shadows in a revolt, and he starts by recruiting Steamboat’s shadow. Steamboat’s shadow arms itself by snapping the shadow of a tree-limb off the shadow of a tree. The tree itself is unaffected by this. Meanwhile not far away, Steamboat points out to Captain Marvel that neither of them is casting a shadow! Marvel sends Steamboat home and tells him to turn out the lights, then takes a flying look around. Right away he sees a brick wall, on which is own shadow is leading Steamboat’s shadow plus those of a score of strangers , in a revolt against humanity, and talking a great deal of smack in the process. Captain Marvel crashes himself into the brick wall, shattering it into thousands of fragments. But the shadows simply re-form themselves on other nearby walls. Then they counterattack, swarming over Captain Marvel, seeking to blind him and blot him out. Marvel flies back up into empty air, where no shadows can form, but on the ground, the mob of them follows along after him, as he flies back to where he left the professor. Smith is still running in circles, and his shadow is complaining about it, until one of the shadow’s remarks gives the professor an idea, about trading places with the shadow. Captain Marvel arrives to find Smith and his shadow, running along side by side, in three dimensions; the shadow is getting more solid. In the professor’s new opinion, the shadows would only return to normal if they themselves really wanted to, and all he is able to do, by thinking about it, is to make them more solid, not less. Marvel encourages him to do exactly that, while a big mob of shadows piles onto him. The shadows are surprised and excited to find themselves growing heavy and solid, now they can really bring the fight to Captain Marvel, but of course, now he can really bring it right back to them too, and he vigorously does so, and the shadows very quickly find themselves wishing to return to their old unsolid states. No sooner do they do so than they all revert to normal, nonsentient shadows.
Soon back at Billy’s apartment, Billy and Steamboat make some witty remarks at the professor’s expense.
- In his laboratory, Sivana, the world’s maddest scientist, declares his hatred for everything and everybody including himself, but ESPECIALLY Captain Marvel . Beautia on the other hand is completely infatuated with Marvel. Sivana goes to work on a new evil scheme: he will find a way to make Beautia and everybody else hate Captain Marvel. Hate is caused by secretions in the blood, of unknown origin, according to one book in Sivana’s gigantic scientific library. So, from laboratory mice, Sivana manages to extract, distill, crystallize, and weaponize the essence of hate, in the form of “hate balls.” He tests the formula on Beautia’s caged pair of lovebirds; they fight for just under half an hour, until the formula wears off.
The next round of testing is on people in a public park, with Sivana in the guise of a sodapop vendor, pedaling a rickshaw-style icebox and giving away free samples. The people start fighting viciously among themselves right away. Billy Batson and Steamboat are strolling through this same park just then, and encounter a crowd of hate-tripping park-goers; Billy SHAZAMs up to try to restore peace. But the crowd just suddenly all start hating on Captain Marvel, and throwing things at him; he hustles Steamboat away to safety. From the cover of some nearby shrubbery, Sivana observes and cackles at this. Leaving the park, Billy returns to the radio studio and broadcasts a report of these events. Meanwhile Sivana sneaks into the studio lobby and drops some hate balls into the water cooler. Mr. Morris and Billy and Steamboat all come into the room and have drinks of water, and start viciously quarreling among themselves. Sivana steps back into the room and grabs Billy by the neck, and abducts him, while Sterling and Steamboat jeer at his predicament. Billy starts to say his magic word but no, he hates Captain Marvel too, that big red glory-hogger!
Sivana drags Billy to his secret hideout, which takes almost half an hour, so Sivana gets ready to refresh Billy’s dose of hate ball. Beautia walks in on this treatment but Sivana smoothly lies about how he’s helpfully administering medicine to the ailing Billy. Beautia thinks this is wonderful, so Sivana hands her a bottle of hate balls and some instructions about how often to medicate Billy, and leaves to go do some even greater crime. Billy is sitting still in a chair, audibly hating on Captain Marvel, and not seeming to notice or care about Sivana or Beautia. But soon the hate balls cause him hate Beautia , and they get to arguing over whether or not Captain Marvel is just a big red piece of cheese, and to prove his point, Billy blurts out SHAZAM! But Captain Marvel too is under the baleful influence of the horrible drug, and he forcibly doses Beautia with a hate ball also. She’s full of wild hate, so Captain Marvel SHAZAMs himself back into Billy. “I’ll let Billy take the rap, the little pipsqueak!”
Instead, Billy and Beautia team up, and go out defacing billboards of Captain Marvel, until Billy remembers how much he hates station WHIZ, decides to smash it all up, and that Captain Marvel should do all the heavy lifting. So he SHAZAMs himself into Captain Marvel, and crashes into the radio station like a raging tornado. Mr. Morris and Steamboat are inside, back to their normal selves, and just in the nick of time, Captain Marvel’s normal personality resurfaces. He goes on the air and warns the public that Sivana is at large, just slightly too late to prevent Sivana from reaching the city’s reservoir, and dropping seven million hate balls into it. One security guard spots him, and calls station WHIZ, Captain Marvel takes the call. He arrives right away and tosses Sivana into the tainted reservoir, and it has the effect of turning evil mad Sivana into a friendly cheerful kindly loveable oldster. Captain Marvel just lets him go. Then when Billy is broadcasting his report of this encounter, he suddenly remembers that the bate ball formula always wears off after a few minutes. Sivana is still on the loose!
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