The Best Cover You've Never Seen--Mad Hatter #2 (1946)!!

Now here's something you don't see every day:

That cover is by Mort Leav.

Yeah, I had never heard of this Mad Hatter guy, either. That's what happens when you try to introduce a new super-hero in 1946, I guess.

So who is this guy, aside from his gorgeous togs?

"The Plunderworld." Gotta love it!!.

Grant Richmond had no powers whatsoever, and no real origin. He was just a junior partner at a law firm who decided to put on a (fabulous) costume and fight crime, because comics.

He had some kind of "Mad Hatter signal" he liked to flash before busting up thugs:

And he liked to talk in rhyme, decades before anyone dreamed of making Etrigan a "Rhymer."

 Ugh.

He also liked to leave nonsense notes at crime scenes, because gimmick:

Mad Hatter lasted a whole 2 issues before vanishing into the land of forgotten heroes. He contributed nothing to the medium, really, except:

That one time Mad Hatter caught a crime kingpin who was then tried and executed, but a mad scientist experimented on the corpse and transmitted the crook's mind into a gorilla's body, and he LIVED, and he put on a rubber mask so people would think he was human, and he became a surprisingly strong and agile crime lord called The Gargoyle, and ultimately we had Mad Hatter and an intelligent crime gorilla locked in a death duel on a moving roller coaster, and GODDAMN I LOVE COMICS!!

Ahem.