(Jungle Comics 005, 1940)
As far as being minor super-villains goes, the Masked Arrows are all right: a group of cloaked bandits who manage to run circles around the local forces of law until they push their luck too far and are wiped out.
The far more interesting thing about the Masked Arrows is the fact that they appear in a story that highlights just how literal the title Jungle Comics is, that virtually all of the stories that appear within take place in an undifferentiated jungle setting that is probably meant to be in Africa but which freely incorporates elements from Southeast Asia such as tigers and Indian-style palaces.
The Masked Arrows' foe is Captain Terry Thunder of the Congo Lancers, a unit of a French Foreign Legion style outfit that I wasted a fair amount of time trying to parse before I realized that "Congo" in this instance was nothing so crass as a geographic indicator but simply meant "jungle" again. To this end, though Fort Death, Thunder's command, is located in a Foreign Legion desert setting it is never more than a days ride from the deepest jungle (and indeed is sometimes in the deepest jungle) and is just as likely to be attacked by South American tribes as desert nomads. Similarly, the Masked Arrows are simultaneously desert and jungle bandits.Wild stuff.
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