MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 815: ORANG, THE APE MAN

(The Spirit, "Orang, the Ape Man", 1 September 1940)

After an indeterminate time away (ten to fifteen years, I reckon), Dr Hoyd returns to the United States from Europe and reconnects with his colleague Dr Egel. Upon retiring to Egel's home, Hoyd is astonished to meet Orang, an orangutan who Egel has imbued with human-level intelligence via training and brain surgery. Dr Hoyd is astonished and delighted by this.

Hoyd is far less impressed when he tries to reconnect with his daughter Elsa who he had entrusted to Dr Egel to take care of following the death of his wife and I guess just... never really communicated with after that? I say this because Dr Egel has used her as the subject of another of his experiments and regressed her to a wild ape-woman, and maybe Hoyd would have known that something was up if he was in regular contact with his kid.

Dr Hoyd, broken-hearted, is prepared to take the law into his own hands and murder Egel for his actions, but is talked out of it by the Spirit. He is then immediately murdered by Egel, using Elsa as his weapon.

Simultaneously, Orang has some sort of mental break when it dawns on him that he has human reasoning but is not human and determines that he must kill Egel in revenge for his now tormented existence, and while I don't agree with the philosophical underpinnings of Orang's reasoning, it is about time for Dr Egel to get his comeuppance, so I'll allow it.

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Orang slays Elsa and then tracks Dr Egel to the docks, where he kills his creator and then ends his own life. A sad end.

OR IS IT? No it is not, as Orang turns out to have a thick skull or a shaky hand and survives his own suicide attempt. After seeking out medical treatment he ends up in the care of Police Commissioner Dolan. I quite like the Orang/Dolan dynamic, which is an odd couple-type relationship founded on an argument about whether you can arrest someone for being a talking ape, but Orang eventually spoils it by kidnapping Ellen Dolan and running off to Borneo to be with his people.

The Spirit of course sets off in hot pursuit and catches up to the two of them just as Orang has finally worn out his welcome with the group of orangutans he set up house with in Borneo. It seems that "meeting a sad and lonely end" was always his destiny, as he ends up being killed by rival ape Aaka whilst being dramatically silhouetted against the Moon.