MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 215: THE THREE DEVILS

(Detective Comics v1 050, 1941) 

The Three Devils are an early example of a fairly common minor super-villain archetype: the acrobat who turns their skill to criminal ends (and of course this is a subset of "circus folk who use their talents for crime" which itself is a subset of "talented professional turns their talent to crime" and then I guess above that is "criminals"). 

I don't think I'm going to bother calling it out every time it happens but they also appear in an early example of what will eventually be a staple of Batman story structure through the 60s, told in three acts:

Act I: the villain's novel methods allow them to triumph over Batman and Robin and get away with their goal - a lot of stories following this structure take place after the Comics Code, so usually this is a theft of some kind.

Act II: Batman and Robin foil the villain's scheme but they still get away.

Act III: the villain is captured while attempting to achieve their goal.

In this case, the Three Devils are flung to their deaths from a clock tower rather than being captured but like I said, it's an early iteration of the format. It's also a format that I noticed while reading Silver Age Batman stories, so it'll be interesting to take note of how it develops and how much it is reflected in other super-hero comics of the time.

The other interesting thing about the Three Devils is that despite falling to their deaths in 1941 they return in Batman Comics v1 107 in 1957 as the Daredevils:

Now, I learned about this Three Devils/Daredevils connection on a fan wiki and so approached it with some skepticism but damned if they weren't right about this one:

They even use the same fence!

Now 1957 is a tricky year - Barry Allen had just debuted as the Flash; Martian Manhunter is running around... this could just be an Earth-One retelling of the Three Devils story, scrubbed of some supernatural cruft. Or these could be the same characters, not actually dead after all - this is the kind of thing that inspired nerds to come up with stuff like Earth-Two-A and Earth-B and so forth.