(Big Shot Comics 006, 1940)
Moora, Queen of the People of the Moon, is technically only called the Moon-Mistress by her enemies, but what can I say, I love alliteration. As introduced, she is merely the leader of a troublesome "hill tribe" that pistol-packing adventurer Rocky Ryan is asked to settle down on behalf of a local Maharajah (where exactly this takes place is ambiguous: Ryan is one of those Golden Age soldier-of-fortune characters who perpetually bums around an "India" that is really a sort of pan-Asian pastiche).
The People of the Moon have a temple in the hills that does double duty as a laboratory for the wizened scientist La Chega, who has "gathered solar energy" into a series of rectangular prisms that the characters insist on calling cubes. Everyone gasses on for a while about how powerful this is without saying why so I assume that it's just going to be a power source when world domination time comes. Also yes solar power is a bit off-brand for a moon cult but consider: the Moon shines due to reflected sunlight. Makes you think.
The People of the Moon also have some sort of dark spirit that they worship as the moon-god Luna. If we accept the caption box info as canon then Luna is a remnant of a "long-dead god", which is heady stuff. That's unfortunately all we learn before Rocky Ryan, following standard operating protocol for meathead adventuremen, attempts to blow Luna away with a six-shooter.
Whether or not Ryan manages to make Luna even more dead, he does somehow hit one of the solar energy cubes rectangular prisms, setting off a chain reaction that ends up blowing the temple and everything in it sky high (though Rocky Ryan survives, of course). Another ancient culture wiped off the map - all in a day's work.
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