(New Fun 001, 1935)
Unfortunately, the first DC super-villain is Fang Gow, a pulp-style Yellow Peril sort who vexes adventurer Barry O'Neill , his pal Inspector LeGrande and the nation of France.
Fang Gow persists until 1941, and inevitably participates in some entertaining stories, including a half year or so in which he is near death and the story relocates to Tunisia where he kidnaps a famous doctor to treat him, but ultimately he's just a warmed-over version of all the Fu Manchu knockoffs who bedeviled the pulps.
His finest moment might just be his death, in fact: captured in French Guiana and on a ship en route to London and trial, he takes a death-simulating drug and requests burial at sea. Instead of being revived by immersion in seawater (and merely having to escape a weighted coffin and swim to shore), he lands on a rogue sea mine and is blown to high heaven.
