(Fantastic Comics 012, 1940)
King Raton is a fellow met by the Golden Knight and his companion/ lover Alice after the earth near a pool of water gives way and they are dropped into a cavern. He demands that they fetch a potion for him from Kataka, Witch of the Volcano, under threat of death - this is a source of conflict not only because of the threats but because he wants the potion in order to conquer Blackamoor Forest, home of their ally the Queen of Blackamoor.
Kataka, Witch of the Volcano turns out to be Raton's mom, which raises the question of why he has to send a couple of heroes up the volcano to get his precious potion. Families are complicated, I guess.
On that note, Kataka goes completely off the rails and tries to kill Sir Richard and Alice as they exit her lair. Exactly why she does this is not elaborated on but it results in here death via magma pool, following which Our Heroes realize something that that seemed obvious to me: they are under no obligation or compulsion to complete this clearly evil quest.
I had a whole thing written about how Sir Richard and Alice just took the word of this guy in a cave that he was a king and that they should be a bit less credulous about that sort of thing before embarking on hazardous quests but I'll be danged if Raton doesn't return in Fantastic Comics 013 with actual subjects!
Raton's plan to sneakily attack Queen Blackamoor and her Forest People using an Annihilating Potion (which is an explosive of some kind, I think) was a sound one because as it turns out, when they are ready for him the Forest people absolutely wipe the floor with his Sand People.
Raton must take after his mother, because like her he makes a poorly thought-out attack on the Golden Knight and his pals and ends up dying for it.
(I've surely mentioned before that I try not to assign modern motivations etc to the characters in these comics but... the Queen of Blackamoor is explicitly into Sir Richard and I have to say that this reads like a proposition to me)
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