(Whiz Comics 019, 1941)
This story's conflict is precipitated by Billy Batson dedicating his radio time one day to the subject of black magic and the nonexistence thereof, and while this dovetails nicely with the 40s and 50s US cultural project of promoting the supremacy of both scientific rationality and Protestant Christianity over superstition (which includes all other world religion, natch), it's a bit rich coming from someone who got super powers from a wizard who lives in a magic cave.
Billy's broadcast also has an unintended consequence: it is heard by an actual black magician living in the hill country near New York Fawcett City, who gets a bit upset on behalf of his profession. This fellow and his son/apprentice Nip are of course examples of the pop culture hillbilly that we continue to encounter to this day but was really in full flower in the 1930s and 40s.
The Black Magician is so insulted by Billy's disrespectful comments about magic, in fact, that he and Nip make two separate attempts to murder him, the first on their own and the second with the help of thugs paid for with magically-created money. These attempts fail thanks to Billy's timely transformations into Captain Marvel, and also provide a fine illustration of that poor opsec that I always accuse Billy of having. Surely you could make it a little less clear that you and Captain Marvel are one and the same, Billy!
Undeterred, the Black Magician next turns to sympathetic magic to strike down his enemy, fashioning a wax likeness of Billy and disabling his limbs and, crucially, his mouth and thus allowing Nip to capture him. Note, however, that the mouth thing is accidental and that despite all my complaining the majority of Captain Marvel's enemies fail to put two and two together re: the relationship between him and Billy Batson.
The Black Magician then learns one of those life lessons that are very situationally important, even though they don't have a lot of day-to-day applicability, and that lesson is: don't use cheese in your great work of magic if you have a cat or you will suffer Consequences, in this case in the form of Captain Marvel. I suppose the more universally useful version of this lesson would be If You Value Your Cheese, Don't Leave It Out or the Cat Will Get It.
In a fun twist on the idea of sympathetic magic, the link between Billy and his effigy is strong enough that the wax figure is transformed into a miniature Captain Marvel at the same time as Billy becomes the real thing, and both proceed to lay into the father-son duo.
Once the pair are subdued, Captain Marvel consigns their book of magic to the flames, and this has the (presumably) unintended consequence of rendering both the Black Magician and Nip completely insane, in your classic 1940s "thinks he's Napoleon" kind of way. We can only theorize at the dark pacts they must have signed to gain power and the terrible toll that breaking them must have taken. Sadly, they appear to have never recovered or at least were uncommonly willing to forego the traditional attempt at revenge if they did.
TROPHY ROOM ADDENDUM: Captain Marvel keeps the effigy, still transformed but no longer animate after the burning of the book, as a souvenir.
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