(Champion Comics 003, 1940)
There's a lot to like about ol' Oo-Lhat. He appears in a gross-sounding mist after explorer Walt Worthington and his aide Snowball (did you know that there was a whole category of racist nicknames for African American characters that has largely been forgotten and that involves naming them after something very black or very white? Well now you do) discover a lost Egyptian tomb containing a blazing scarab (the gem cut, not the insect) that drew them into a pocket dimension when touched.
Oo-Lhat captures the duo and forces them to listen to his life story, employing a magical teevee called the Curtain of Ammon to do so.
A priest of Osiris at Karnak, Oo-Lhat gives it all up and switches allegiances to Set in order to obtain gold, power and the love of a beautiful woman.
This is where Oo-Lhat starts to make the transition from small-b to big-b Bad Guy. He makes his way to the Oasis of Memthet, where a cult had gathered to worship the same scarab encountered by Walt and pal. Oo-Lhat takes over by the simple expedient of murdering all of the other contenders.
Discovering the pocket dimension accessible through the scarab, Oo-Lhat moved his cult into it and had them build a city, from which they raided caravans under the somewhat grandiose name of the League of Assassins - pretty sure just jumping out of a portal and stabbing someone is just regular murder, bro.
The real appeal of the scarab dimension, though, was the fact that time essentially did not pass there and so the population was essentially immortal - even those killed by gross bodily trauma came back as weird ghosts. Possibly the best aspect of this is the fact that animals could not properly comprehend this state of being and so immediately died and came back, and as they presumably had an imperfect vision of themselves they came back wrong, leading to the city being full of weird lumpy camels.
The timelessness of the scarab world eventually backfires on Oo-Lhat and his followers when the temple is buried in a sandstorm, trapping them for thousands of years with nothing to do but twiddle their thumbs.
Oo-Lhat is all set to resume his ways as an "assassin" but his followers have other ideas. Presented with the choice of whether to leave or stay, every single one of them leaves. Including Oo-Lhat, after a little five-fingered persuasion from his lieutenant Kardak.
The explorers eventually follow (along with some babes they found and fell in love with) and discover the final fate of Oo-Lhat and the League of so-called Assassins: time spent in the pocket dimension, it turns out, was not avoided so much as deferred: Oo-Lhat, the League and even the babes were reduced to skeletons the instant they exited.
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