(Captain Marvel Adventures 005, 1941)
The Swamp Devil! Part of a couple of fairly populous subgroupings of supercrook: the "kill or scare off folk in order to do a land-grab" type and the "pose as a figure from local legend in order to capitalize on preexisting fear, etc" cohort (a frequently paired duo). Specifically, the Swamp Devil is actually Woggs, an engineer tasked with draining part of the Great Dismal Swamp to create more farmland who is instead flooding nearby farms and using a combination of mind control gas and his monsterized diving rig/ costume to scare off or murder the locals. Later, he plans to return and buy up the fertile farmland cheap.
I gotta say... this seems like a lot of effort to go to for swamp-adjacent farmland. Most guys who pull this kind of scheme are after a quicker payoff: deposits of oil or precious metals, pearl beds, buried treasure... Sure you can get rich off farming but it's a lot more of a long-term plot than your average small-time supercrook is geared for - presumably he's going to have to change his name, right? Or a similar level of obfuscation to cover for the fact that Mr Woggs is back for the land he failed to secure the last time around in his official capacity? Just as well he gets stomped by Captain Marvel, really.
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