Number 820

Hooded Menace

I don't know whether the Hooded Menace (aka "the Fun Club"), told in this 1951 Avon one-shot comic* under their Realistic Comic imprint, was an actual gang, or strictly fictional. Various supremacist groups have been active in the West and Pacific Northwest, even recently. The Hooded Menace is set in the early 1900s.

As they spread their lawless terror these groups engendered a lot of popular fiction. Paperback books used to put these goofballs on the covers and it was probably good for a few sales. Just reaching onto my paperback shelves I've come up with at least one:

Louis Ravielli, a competent artist whose work shows up in comics of the mid 1940s to the mid 1950s, did the art chores on The Hooded Menace, including the inside cover, and presumably the cover as well.

*I don't believe any other publisher did what Avon did. They would name a comic after the lead story, as in Phantom Witch Doctor, then use some inventory crime or horror stories to pad out the comic book. In the case of The Hooded Menace there's a true crime story about Mad Dog Coll and a private eye tale to back up the title feature.