(Leading Comics 001, 1941)
The Hand holds the distinction of being both the first foe of the Seven Soldiers of Victory (all 9 or 10 of them) and the person who organized them as a team in the first place, and all as a way to get attention, essentially. As first presented, he is a master criminal so successful that he is unknown to the world at large who has just received word that he is dying with no hope of a reprieve.
Somewhat understandably, the Hand decides to go out with a bang rather than a whimper, by recruiting five other super-villains to act as his "fingers" and carry out his most audacious crimes.
We'll get into the nitty gritty of the Five Fingers of the Hand in the next entry (because I have a system and I need to stick to it, okay?) but the long and the short of it is that the Hand gathers together pre-established supercrooks the Needle, Professor Merlin and the Red Dragon, never-before-seen supercrook the Dummy and lucky-to-be-considered schnook Big Caesar, outfits them with crime plans and sets them up in a classic Justice Society style "everyone split up and have a little adventure" adventure with what will become the Seven Soldiers of Victory.
Though this might be the most reasonable reason for sending a taunting note to the forces of Law I have yet seen (after all, how greater the crime if it is actively opposed?), it remains a bad idea to do so, categorically, as evidenced by the fact that every one of the Five Fingers is summarily captured (or in the case of Professor Merlin, exploded) mid-caper, leading to the traditional final act of the JSA-style story wherein everyone comes together to beat up the mastermind.
Who knows if the Hand could have handled them if he hadn't been informed that his condition was, in fact, treatable just before the fight. Could he have taken on seven super-heroes if he still thought he was going to die? We will never know. Instead, he almost gets them with a lightning cannon but ends up being electrocuted by it, ironically dying just as he learned that he might have a chance to live.
Or did he? No he didn't, it turns out, because years later Len Wein wanted to bring back the Seven Soldiers of Victory and concocted a story wherein they were blasted through time, and who better to be responsible than their very first foe? And since that caper involved the Nebula Man, one of Grant Morrison's favourite creeps, the Hand showed up in Seven Soldiers, too. He seems to have about a 30-year refractory period, so look for him on comic shelves sometime in 2036!
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