(Champion Comics 004, 1940)
Champion Comics 003 featured the murder of the Champ's mentor Dr Marlin and at the conclusion of that adventure the blame for Marlin's death seemed to rest squarely on the shoulders of his assistant Dr Katsu. Champion Comics 004, however, introduces a further development: Katsu was in fact working for a greater mastermind, the Yellow Spider!
(and here I'm going to contrast my usual delight at a villainous note signed with a little cartoon with my deep sighs as I say that yes, the Yellow in Yellow Spider is 100% a racist thing. Early Champion Comics issues are even more comfortable with using racist tropes for their villains than the rest of the comics industry, and that's saying something)
The Yellow Spider is big on indirect action. Beyond employing goons to do his dirty work he also uses engine-killing rays and cuts in on radio and telephone signals to orchestrate events at a distance, such as his successful kidnapping of the Champ here, followed by his doing a solid for the unnamed police officer who was supposed to be driving him around.
The Champ is brought to the Yellow Spider's dirigible/ base, where he eventually learns that the Spider is in fact this one little guy who has popped up a couple of times previously as an agent of what turns out to be himself. It's not explicit but quite possible he wants formula because he is puny (spoiler: much later it turns out that Dr Katsu pulled a double cross and had the formula all along. This Yellow Spider/ Champ beef is all a huge waste of everyone's time).
As the Champ was summarily evicted from the Yellow Spider's dirigible at the end of issue 4, Champion Comics 005 is almost entirely concerned with busywork. To whit:
-the Champ learns to fly a plane
-the Champ and his pal Bird Kelly attack the dirigible, too late remember about the engine killing ray and are knocked out of the sky
-the Champ travels back to Midwest University to talk to a ray expert
-the ray expert is stranded on a mountain; the Champ must go rescue him
-in consultation with the expert, the Champ crafts ray shielding for his plane
-the Champ and Bird Kelly go back up in a now-shielded plane
-the Champ STILL has to go on the dirigible and wreck the ray because it also explodes gunpowder and they only brought grenades for some reason
-the Champ hops back over to his plane and explodes the dirigible, killing the Yellow Spider
I will say that the Champ expressing some remorse over having killed an evil man (or at least not being up to watching the carnage) is a real departure for the Golden Age. Lotta righteous killing going on back then.
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