While I usually look at these heroes with neutrality (no open love or hate, just seeing them for what they are... well, okay, maybe the bullying isn't neutral, but I have to entertain myself somehow), today's hero is someone I'm sad we didn't see more of.

Master Mystic is an anomaly. Nobody knows who he is or where he came from (not unusual for a Golden Age Hero, but it's quite rare for the comic to call attention to it)... and honestly, I'm not sure where they came from either. They're just here, fully formed, sitting in their red tower waiting to stop villainy. Their powers come from the simple idea of "Mind over matter" taken to its illogical extreme - being able to defy any and every law of physics and reality just by thinking it.

Their presentation really does lean into a sinister quality about them - they wear red robes obscuring every identifiable feature, and they live in a tall, fantastical tower which shouldn't belong in the modern day, yet here it stands... Even their speech bubbles are off. Square, but... dripping?

Their first appearance gives Stardust the Super Wizard a run for his money in terms of cruel punishments. Their foe has grown to a large size, but is still biologically human... yet Master Mystic melts them!

Everything about this is just so compelling to me. I get the impression that he sat in the back of someone's mind for a while, just waiting for their chance to be unleashed upon the world... and so it's sad to say they only had one comic. Maybe they were too unconventional - even Stardust and Fantomah had some pretensions of being regular heroes, but Master Mystic... from the offset, they were different.