(Action v1 009, 1939)
In a fairly typical display of respect for the Tibetan peoples and their religion, the Mad Lama is a ruthless villain bent on world domination. Presumably he achieved his powers through rigid dedication to the popular “evil” style of Tibetan Buddhism.
The Lama himself doesn’t get to do much other than bloviate for a while before being incinerated in a magic duel with Zatara, so the most interesting thing about him is the fact that he gathered up a cadre of other villains to help him out, a move that I dearly love as it supplies me with more weird little guys to know about.
Pictured from left to right (after the Mad Lama, of course) above are:
-Monsieur Henri, a Frenchman able to conjure illusory mists
-Lalla Gor, probably meant to be Indian but they just kind of spammed syllables to make foreign names back in the day, able to summon an army of phantom warriors
–the Tigress, our very own MSV 019 in her first turn as another villain’s henchman (she abandons the Lama to team up with Zatara pretty quickly)
-Zatara, posing as Major Lee, an Englishman of unknown abilities
-some bald guy
The Mad Lama gets mentioned every time someone talks about Zatara’s early career in a comic – he came up a couple of times when Zatanna was on her Dad-quest in the 60s, for example – but I don’t reckon he ever recovered from his incineration to actually come back again.
