MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 870: THE CHIEF

(Zip Comics 002, 1940)

While walking down the street one day in what is almost certainly supposed to be New York City, Jim "the Scarlet Avenger" Kendal witnesses the protection racket-related bombing of a tailor shop. What's worse, the police response to the blast makes it pretty clear that they are on the take!

Using his network of operatives, the Scarlet Avenger discovers when and where the next bombing is set to take place and intervenes by way of a heat ray that blows up the bomb as well as the crooks delivering it to kingdom come.

After this and other interference in the gang's activities, the Scarlet Avenger has well and truly drawn the ire of the leader, the aptly-named Chief, who arranges for the Avenger to be captured and delivered to him for disposal. But! Not without the Scarlet Avenger hearing about it first. 

Before the Chef can execute his plan to execute the Scarlet Avenger in his homemade gas chamber, the hero reveals that he has "electrically wired myself, a million volts," and that whatever that means, it allows him to easily escape both his shackles and the glass chamber.

It also gives the Avenger a lethal touch, as both the Chief and his gang learn when they are killed by it. And just who is this mastermind of crime? Why, it's the district attorney! There are a lot of questions to be asked about the large numbers of both super-heroes and super-villains who are district attorneys in their day-to-day lives, but at this point the one I'm asking is: just where do they find the time?

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 496: THE CHIEF AND THE COBRA

(Big Shot Comics 016, 1941)

The Cobra technically works for the Chief if you want to exclusively go by the criminal org chart, but the Cobra is also the only reason for the Chief being mentioned at all and not just thrown into my big bin of nondescript gang bosses. Thus: a dual entry.

Like I said, the Chief is your regular degular gang boss, albeit one who swans around in a green smoking jacket the whole time. Feeling the pinch as the Face cracks down on crime, he hires the Cobra, a rare super-powered Columbia Comics Corporation character. It's not much - she can do comic book hypnotism that causes her target to see what she wants and also scry her hypnotized target using a crystal ball - but it's more than most of her criminal peers have.

The Chief and the Cobra essentially prank the Face's secret identity Tony Trent by making him think that a man and then an entire house have disappeared, with the idea being that Trent, who at this point "knows" the Face in the same way Clark Kent knows Superman, will bring him in to investigate. And it works, only instead of being easily killed the Face does his regular schtick and beats everyone up. It's your classic villain's 2/3 of a plan - no consideration for how to deal with their foe, only how to draw them out.

The Chief and the Cobra are pretty swiftly rounded up. Is hypnotizing a guy not to see a house and then looking at him in a crystal ball a crime? If not I assume that the Cobra was released pretty swiftly. I mean, she did try to shoot the Face at the end of the story but good luck ever convicting someone of attempted murder of a masked vigilante, amiright?