(Smash Comics 008, 1940)
Times are tough in Unionville: the local factories are all suffering accidents which appear to be due to systemic worker negligence but which add up to a campaign of sabotage, and since it's a factory town, if things continue as they are then everyone is completely screwed.
Luckily for the good folk of Unionville, the steel mill that the latest incident occurred at is managed by a guy named Tom, and Tom is friends with a fellow named Kent Thurston, and Kent Thurston is also known as the Invisible Hood, who immediately works out that the obvious culprit must be... a voodoo master!
The Invisible Hood's theories are vindicated when the next incident of sabotage triggers an explosion that knocks loose a couple of memories in the unwitting steelworker who set it in motion. Turns out that the mysterious villain is hiding out in the nearby abandoned castle, which is a new one on me.
Inside, the Hood does indeed discover the Voodoo Master (and whether this is a name he had for himself is rendered irrelevant by the fact that he accepts it as his when it is used by others - a real relief after a month or so heavy in unofficial names). The Voodoo Master has surrounded himself with crooks in faux-Medieval garb, and the goofiness of this aesthetic almost overshadows just how sinister and creepy the man's actual scheme is: he plans to ruin Unionville financially and so isolate it from the rest of the country so that he can use its population as fodder to test out the extent of his powers. That's some twisted 90s psychothriller shit, the sort of thing that can get very dark, very quickly.
Invisible Hood stories aren't very long, so there are only two further points of interest vis-a-vis the Voodoo Master. The first is that he does seem to have some credible magical acumen, as he whips up a quick anti-invisibility spell once he becomes aware of the Hood's presence in his lair. This is honestly a lot more flexible than non-heroic comic book magic users usually are - the Voodoo Master seems to be the rare one not working off of AD&D Magic User rules.
There's such a thing as getting too confident, however, as the Voodoo Master proves when, brimming over with hubris, he challenges an invisible man to a sword fight on his castle parapet. This ends predictably, and Unionville is saved!
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