(Master Comics 012, 1941)
The Seven Masters are just your regular drug smuggling/ opium dealing gang operating out of San Francisco’s Chinatown. They don’t get up to anything too spectacular – El Carim gets in on the action because the head of the gang is using his criminal might to try to get a woman to marry him instead of her boyfriend – and they trade on some pulp-era Yellow Peril tropes, but despite all of that I must admit to liking their style. The name! The robes! The custom sword-lowering engine! If only they all hadn’t been wasted on low-tier chumps!