(Thrilling Comics 002, 1940)
Metropolitan Hospital* is in trouble! A mysterious masked figure dubbed the Mystery Man** has been conducting a campaign of terror against the august institution that includes both seemingly random and seemingly targeted murders, the installation of a gang boss and his henchmen in one of the wards, and the theft of $100 000 worth of radium! It's the perfect case for the Woman in Red to make her debut, as undercover police officer Peggy Allen is sent to the hospital as a nurse.
* I was prepared to do my usual song and dance about how this comic was probably set in NYC but that there was no way to really be sure, but danged if I didn't check and to my surprise there seems to be exactly one Metropolitan Hospital in the world.
** And speaking of rare names, I was certain that we already had a Mystery Man on the books and that there would be all kinds of one shot Mystery Men in comics, like how there are dozens of guys named the Mask and the Masked Man and the Hood, but all we have now is Zoro the Mystery Man and all I can find otherwise is the time that Commissioner Gordon dressed up like a super-hero and called himself Mysteryman. Colour me surprised.
The Mystery Man is ultimately undone by his radium-thieving ways, as the Woman in Red is able to track it down with a radiation detector and pull the old "coat the loot in a florescent chemical gag" to expose the person who had been handling it (the fact that she was initially able to find it by feeling "an odd burning sensation" through both its container and a reasonably thick wall may be a bad sign for everyone involved, however).
The Mystery Man turns out to be Dr Billings, the Assistant Superintendent of the hospital, and all this murder and mayhem was just a very extreme attempt to get a promotion. This kind of works, because he kills Hospital Superintendent Thorndyke about halfway through the story, but he doesn't manage to stick the landing and dies in a fiery car wreck while fleeing the scene.
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