(Marvel Mystery Comics v1 025, 1941)
Enric Zagnar is your classic Victim of Orthodoxy. His beliefs (mankind will someday be able to control the weather) clash with the view of the establishment (that is wrong) and so he is left adrift.
He of course goes off into the mountains to learn how to control the weather and dream of revenge.
Harnessing the power of black magic, he attempts to flood and drown the entire town and is opposed by everyone’s fave smoke-dweller the Vision.
Finally, in his moment of triumph, nature itself seems to take a hand and he is incinerated by lightning.
Honestly the most interesting part of this guy’s story aside from his wild-haired Jack Kirby Draws a Madman design is the specifics of the conflict between Zagnar and his unnamed university. “Mankind will learn to control the weather someday” is not a particularly outré belief, particularly in comics – we’re probably less than a decade away from the heyday of cloud seeding as a go-to solution, for instance – so I reckon it’s the hubris of it all, the Victor Frankenstein “we will be as gods” of it all that narratively seals Zagnar’s fate.
