(Thrilling Comics 010, 1940)
Fifth column activities are wreaking havoc on the US! Why, it's so bad that the new National Defense Building has been bombed! Doc Strange is called in along with a crack team of industrialists to help solve the problem, and is pointed toward fellow committee member Henry Dallas by yet another member, Robert W Marsh. Could this be so easy a problem to solve?
Henry Dallas kills himself rather than own up to working with the Nazis against American interests, but Doc Strange is able to trace his business dealings to the defunct Mammoth Automobile factory in the South, where he discovers a fascist tank-manufacturing setup. He also takes an explosive anti-tank shell to the back of the head, which is immaterial to the story, but it is fun to occasionally highlight just how powerful a super-hero is.
Strange finally comes face to face with the leader of this operation (conveniently called the Leader) after both he and Virginia Thompson are captured by them, and unmasks him within minutes, revealing him to be... Robert W Marsh, who is coincidentally also the only other named character in the comic. I gotta say, I wish that the Leader facade had been maintained for longer, both because I always prefer referring to a guy by a codename rather than by what's on his birth certificate, but also because that mask is a pretty sweet little number and I wish that Marsh had a reason to keep wearing it.
Doc and Virginia of course escape from Marsh and prevent his bid to take over the US by bombing Washington DC into dust, but the former Leader is pretty conspicuously not among the casualties of that battle. And well he shouldn't be, because he is also the antagonist of the next Doc Strange story:
In Thrilling Comics 011, Marsh takes over the... Central?... American nation of Panamela to use as a staging area for another attempt to take over the US.
(side note: it is pretty remarkable that Marsh is just a straight-up Nazi in 1940, albeit one with a reversed swastika. I suppose it's possible that this is a small-n nazi, as a stand-in for fascist)
Marsh's plan revolves around attacking the US using the Panamelan fleet and some new super-explosive artillery shells, but he is foiled when Doc Strange sabotages the explosive at the production stage. Pop! Plink!
Though his fleet is blasted into oblivion by the US Navy, Marsh lives to fight another day.
I'll be honest, I'm tired of the guy and I almost included his third appearance here to get him out of the way, even though it takes place in 1941. But when I started reading it to do just that I was startled to find out that it's fun! There isn't even any naval combat! Thus, I'm going to leave it as a treat for myself in the future.
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