All-Star Comics #34

THE WILES OF THE WIZARD!

The Wizard, a criminal super-magician, confronts the Justice Society and asserts they are really a gang of criminals posing as heroes in order to pull off a colossal theft sometime in the future. He insists he be included in their plans. But when they protest that they have no such plans, he challenges them to prove their heroism by foiling five crimes which are soon to be committed. The members of the team split up, all except Wonder Woman (as usual) and Johnny Thunder , who isn’t given a case to solve, much to his dismay.  Hawkman flies to a party at a wealthy estate. Two crooks have filled party balloons with gas to knock out the guests and rob their valuables. Hawkman uses his wings to dissipate the gas and knocks out the crooks. The Wizard appears, believing Hawkman is only pretending to be good, and sends Hawkman to a frozen mountaintop. Lighting some of his feathers on fire to keep warm, he cracks the ice. This breaks the Wizard's spell and sends him back to the party, where he rounds up the crooks.  Doctor Mid-Nite arrives at a bank and breaks up a check fraud operation. The Wizard arrives and uses magic to tie him up. His lackeys then throw Dr. Mid-Nite into a bay. He manages to undo the knots and swim to the surface, however, then capsizes the gang's boat and forces the gang to row the boat to jail.  Two men sabotage a laboratory experiment, hoping to knock out the scientists and steal their formulas. The Flash stops the heist, but the Wizard materializes in a puff of smoke and traps Flash in a glass tube. The Wizard gives his men the tube and they load Flash into an oven. Using superspeed, Flash turns the tube into a rocket and frees himself. Catching up to the fleeing thieves, he rips their getaway car from its chassis.  The Atom arrives at a fur truck heist. The Wizard's gang has tailed a fur truck to a drawbridge, then opened the bridge to box in the truck. The Atom dispatches all the men, but a nearby bird transforms into the Wizard. Atom attacks him, but the Wizard ties him up with a nearby cable with a wave of his wand. The gang hangs him from the top of the bridge and closes it, threatening to crush the diminutive hero. Although he is unable to break free, he swings on top of the bridge, so that the closing bridge only snaps the cable, freeing him to capture the gang and lock them up in the fur truck.  As an inventor tests his new railroad safety switch with his model trains, the Wizard's men arrive and steal the switch.  The Green Lantern arrives and stops the robbery and defeats the men. Observing from inside a model train, the Wizard transforms to full size and shrinks Green Lantern (but not his ring) so that he can tie him to the model railroad’s train track. Reaching his ring with his feet, the Lantern recovers and knocks out the escaping men.  Back at Headquarters, Johnny fumes to Wonder Woman about not being assigned a case. The other members return and find the Wizard waiting for them. He traps them all by transforming their headquarters into his ship. The Wizard then tells them his story about how he gave up being a simple gunman and studied hypnosis and astral projection with Tibetan Monks, and then learned black magic. One final time, the Wizard asks to be included in their supposed plans to commit crimes. They refuse and the furious Wizard conjures up monsters to attack them. Dr. Mid-Nite realizes that the monsters are hypnotic suggestions and uses a blackout bomb to make the creatures disappear. Admitting defeat, the Wizard dives into a vat of acid and vanishes.