(Jungle Comics 004, 1940)
The Scientist (no other name given) is a man with a very comic book plan: develop a serum capable of giving gorillas superhuman intelligence, do so to a population of the particularly huge Gorgon Gorillas, and use the resulting army to conquer the world, presumably after a period of rapid gorilla breeding.
Though the Scientist is a compelling villain in his own right (he is a world-class asshole, for example, like all the best bad guys), the stars of this adventure are absolutely the Gorgon Gorillas, who for example respond to a gorilla call by marching single-file through the jungle beating their chests until they just kind of topple into a pit trap.
The post-enhancement gorgons are even better, as they exhibit a range of amazing facial expressions from "benignly intelligent" to "absolutely fucking mental" depending on input from the Scientist.
As is her prerogative, Fantomah waits to step in to the situation until the crisis point, in this case the Scientist ordering his gorilla army to scour human life from the face to the jungle. Alas, he learns too late that the old adage is true: you live by the army of demonized gorillas, you die by the army of demonized gorillas.
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