(Cat-Man Comics 001, 1941)
Some villains are puzzles, high-concept enigmas whose motivations and goals are a mystery that must be solved to understand them. The Bridge-Destroyers are not that. They are exactly what their name declares them to be: a couple of guys in a tower who destroy bridges using a long-range heat-ray cannon.
But why the Bridge-Destroyers destroy bridges, that must be a mystery, yes? Perhaps it is, but the authorities are pretty certain that they are working for "some foreign power" to disrupt America's ability to move troops and war materiel from place to place. Despite this, the official response to the group seems to be resigned acceptance as their defenses are so good that it is considered foolhardy to even try to stop them.
Despite their fearsome reputation, Cat-Man is determined to face the Bridge-Destroyers head-on, which means that he meets their fist line of defense: a bunch of guys who live in a hole just outside the tower and suck up intruders using a giant vacuum. This might be enough to stop your every-day lawman, but the Cat-Man has all the powers of a cat, man. He simply avoids being battered to death by the whirling storm of debris and beats up the hole-dwellers when they come to retrieve his corpse.
To their credit, the Bridge-Destroyers do manage to kill Cat-Man with a blast from their heat-ray as he makes his second approach to the tower but then they are treated to a lesson about how the "nine lives" part of his super-powers works. Stripped of their ray, their tower and their hole full of men, the masterminds between the war on America's infrastructure are swiftly subdued.







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