(Amazing-Man Comics 013, 1940)
The Great One is a real testament to the fact that style is far more important than substance when it comes to super-villainy. On a purely objective level the Great One is average at best, with an entry-level costume and a scheme that was old back in the days of the pulps. But it's the style that makes the villain, and if the Great One has anything , it's style.
The Great One's scheme involves using a submersible aircraft carrier as a base of operations to capture planes using a magnetic tractor ray, then hypnotizing their crews into serving him as an army of loyal minions. If this happened in real life it would obviously be the news of the century but in any comic book universe it's strictly cliche.
But the Great One is making it work! He speechifies, he dresses his pilots up in weird brown sack uniforms, he names his submersible aircraft carrier "Eurania, the Floating Continent". He's such a grandiose, self-assured ass of a villain that I'm a bit surprised that he bothers to hold the Scarlet Ace at bay with a gun rather than trying to bluff him with sheer personality.
The Great One's downfall comes in two parts: first, after the Scarlet Ace discovers that the pilots can be shaken out of their mind control via a good sock to the jaw, he makes the key mistake jaw ordering them to beat him up rather than, say, employing firearms to take him out. As freed pilots join in the jaw-socking, all are freed with an exponential swiftness.
The second part is unavoidable. There is no way that the Great One that so endeared himself to me would not do something as foolhardy as stand up in his biplane to gloat over his impending victory over the Scarlet Ace. I salute thee, Great One, a bombastic idiot to the end.
