(Blue Ribbon Comics 019, 1941)
The Mad Botanist is an assassin "in the employment of a foreign power" which in 1941 as good as means that he was working for the Axis. His nom de guerre comes from the fact that his preferred method of murder is via deadly plant life, including the African Tentacle Vine, the Mediterranean Poison Cornflower and of course the insidious Man-Eating Clam-Plant. The Botanist's somewhat bizarre physical appearance is never commented upon in the comic so it's a real toss up whether they'd have gone with "he works with deadly plants after being rejected for his appearance" or "working with deadly plants has really messed up his body".
Helping the Mad Botanist in his work are the rock stupid cops of whatever city he works out of, who not only adopt an "arrest the first person we see upon arriving at the crime scene" attitude but also seemingly facilitate this man's death by arresting Captain Flag while he is actively trying to save him from strangling vines.
This is a shorter story so the Mad Botanist doesn't actually get to do that much: he kills one guy with vines, almost kills another by dressing up as an old lady and selling him a poison flower and then ends up in his own Man-Eating Clam-Plant after a final confrontation with Captain Flag. Is the percentage of villains who employ carnivorous plants and then die to them higher than that of similar villains who employ robots or trained animals? I suspect that it is, if only because artists don't want to draw a giant flytrap without the satisfaction of drawing it chomping someone.
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