(The Spirit, "The Origin of the Spirit", June 2, 1940)
Poor Dr Cobra. He goes to all the trouble to put together a sewer lair and develop some weird green slop that puts people into a state of suspended animation and he doesn't even get to lay out what his plans for the stuff were. No, PI Denny Colt has to show up and get doused in slop and become the Spirit and now that's all that anyone ever remembers about the affair.
Dr Cobra ends up being the first collar by the newly-disinterred Spirit, with a little help from Police Commissioner Dolan. Oh the ignominy.
Unfortunately for Dr Cobra, he knows that the Spirit is Denny Colt, and so the laws of narrative demand that he be tied up as a looses end. In the second installment of "the Spirit" he escapes by bamboozling Dolan's daughter Ellen, but of course he is immediately tracked down by the Spirit and ends up exploding.
This all feels a bit thin, and that's because there's not too much to Dr Cobra beyond being an origin catalyst. It's a terrible thing to happen to a villain. He has a handful of appearances over the years, but I'm 90% certain that every one of them is a retelling of the Spirit's origin story, and though I can't find an example I am certain that there's at least one of those in which Cobra is replaced with the Octopus. It's no way to treat a criminal scientist, I tell you.
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