The Ethic Committee is going to have a field day.
Dr Belos is a single-issue mad scientist: he wants to turn men into birds, and to that end he has set up camp in a place called the Valley of Terror and gotten to work creating surgical chimeras called Vulture Men. His downfall comes about because he kidnaps surgeon Dr D'arne to act as his unwilling assistant, thus causing D'Arne's daughter to bring in the Flame to help rescue him.
Please also note that Belos has a single long fang in place of one of his lower incisors.
Despite looking more like human-reptile than human-bird hybrids, the Vulture Men are some classic examples of monstrous humanoid henchmen. They also get mercilessly slaughtered by the Flame instead of perhaps being captured and restored to human form, like so many of the monstrously transformed in comics are. I guess next time they shouldn't be transformed into bird guys against their wills.
Though the Flame really wrecks up his operation, Dr Belos' true nemesis turns out to be the pitching arm of Dr D'Arne, when he flings what is presumably a Vulture Man skull with sufficient force to kill the mad scientist outright. Then the Flame destroys Belos' dam and floods the Valley of Terror for good measure. (Wonderworld Comics 015, 1940)
Dr Grant was kicked out of the Scientist's Society for his theories, and while I always have some sympathy for the villains who are reacting to hidebound thinkers and their ways, one must consider that his response to this slight is to start collapsing bridges with his friction-neutralizing ray. If this is the way that Grant typically escalates conflict, maybe it wasn't his theories but his interpersonal skills that got him kicked out of the Society in the first place.
Grant's comes into conflict with newsreel camerawoman Patty O'Day and eventually gets shot by Patty's assistant Ham. (Wonderworld Comics 018, 1940)
Zarhov is what I would call a pretty mad scientist, who has transformed a lady into a huge apelike creature called Zozo and is now looking to do the same to the daughter of his enemy Dr Carr. Luckily for Carr, he is friends with Yarko the Great (comics are full of older scientists with no wife and one beautiful adult daughter, and they seem to make up 100% of Yarko's social circle), who manages to baffle Zozo long enough for her monster rage to turn on Zahrov. Zozo gets off lightly compared to fellow transformees like the Vulture Men, because Yarko the Great has the means and inclination to turn her back into a human being. (Wonderworld Comics 020, 1940)
Godfrey Calkins, described as a "retired millionaire business man" has an interesting idea that he seems to want to employ for normal, non-criminal means: he wants to freeze people so that they can better withstand the rigours of space travel. A noble goal! The problem lies in his experimental methodology: instead of starting out with animal testing and then perhaps moving on to volunteers, Calkins has decided to move straight to human trials on some kidnapped teenagers. And what's worse is that he acquires those teenagers by derailing an entire train full of football boosters into a river with the expectation that there would probably be a survivor or two. Truly a wretched man!
Luckily for the teens in question, they are Dusty Davis and Janey Smart, classmates and pals of Atom Blake, Boy Wizard, and he soon shows up to beat the tar out of Calkins and his goons and to retrieve and thaw out Janey from the Venus-bound rocket she was already setting out on. No word on what subsequently happened to Calkins - perhaps he had to pay a small fine. (Wow Comics 001, 1940)
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