(Fantastic Comics 021, 1941)
The Scorpion is an Irish super-criminal who, in a classic villain move, inspires the creation of his own nemesis when he slays a man on the moors near Cork one dark night (and whether there are any moors in that area is surprisingly tedious to find out, so just colour me generically skeptical) as part of a scheme to acquire a gold deposit.
The future nemesis in question is the man's stepson, Jim O'Donnell, whose subsequent pursuit of justice for the murder leads to him becoming the costumed vigilante known as the Banshee. And speaking of banshees: the reason hat the Scorpion leaves Jim alive as a potential witness to the murder is that he mistakes a wailing gust of wind for a banshee's cry and runs away rather than finish murdering him.
In addition to the fact that he is very superstitious and also our first Irish super-villain, the third noteworthy thing about the Scorpion is the fact that he doesn't look anything like a scorpion, and instead has a kind of demonic imp look going on, perhaps one that is meant to be a kind of "if a scorpion was a guy" concept.
The Scorpion next heads to NYC to murder Jim's step-cousin Joan O'Neill as his original victim's last surviving heir (as mentioned in the Banshee entry: Jim and his step-father were close in a "vengeance ques" but not a "be left something in the will" kind of way).
The Scorpion is of course captured before he is able to murder Joan, and it's a rough one for him: in addition to being unmasked, he is distracted at a critical moment by a police siren (and if that's the threshold that he has for "banshee noises" then he must live in a state of perpetual fear, even in 1940s NYC), has Jim fall on him and break his leg while stumbling around with a clothesline worth of sheets rapped around him, and to add insult to injury is taken to jail by the only two non-Irish cops in comic book NYC ("what the heck is a banshee?", sheesh).
Not to be dissuaded, the Scorpion breaks jail and gets into the arms smuggling business with a new green mask. His major rival in this is crooked air transport company owner Joe Collins, who coincidentally happens to be Joan's boss who has just agreed to give Jim a job as well. Despite some particularly gruesome warnings in the form a missing pilot's head and hand, Collins refuses to give up his smuggling business and gets himself murdered by the Scorpion.
The Scorpion remains wildly superstitious, however, and once Jim shows up in his Banshee costume it's basically all over. Do you reckon he gets sent back to Ireland to serve time for his crimes there, or does he go to American jail first?
Categorized in: Animals (Scorpions), Narrative Footballs (Origin Story Guys), Supranormal Beings (Imps)
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