(Adventure Comics 049, 1940)
The Tiger-Men are... contextually villains, I guess, in that they do arson and murder and are opposed by hero Steve Conrad. They are ALSO part of a pattern that emerges if you read a lot of old comics that take place in international locales: the hero rocks up and helps solve a problem between colonizers and the native population and the narrative frames what are usually pretty reasonable demands by the latter as rank villainy.
In the case of the Tiger-Men, their whole deal is that they are Indians who would please like their land back, if the English plantation owners could be bothered to leave (great violence is meted out to them for this).
