Mala

Cover to Action Comics No. 194

An evil survivor of the planet Krypton and an almost perfect look-alike for Superman who, along with his two villainous brothers, Kizo and U-Ban, battled Superman in July-August 1950 (S No. 65: "Three Supermen from Krypton!") and again in July 1954 (Act No. 194: "The Outlaws from Krypton!"). (TGSB) The three brothers were collectively known as The Evil Three.

Once members, along with Superman’s father Jor-El, of “Krypton’s ruling council,” which, according to Superman No. 65, “consisted of the [planet’s] ten leading scientists,” Mala and his brothers were exiled into outer space in a state of suspended animation inside a specially constructed space capsule after Jor-El had courageously thwarted their malevolent scheme to make themselves masters of Krypton by using a diabolical device of their own invention to extract all the moisture from Krypton’s air as a means of blackmailing the Kryptonian population into capitulating to their rule. When Krypton exploded several years later, the three brothers remained alive, but asleep, in their space-capsule prison, until the day a hurtling fragment of their native planet crashed through the capsule’s hull, awakening them from Krypton’s unique environment, with mighty super-powers identical to Superman’s.

In July-August 1950 Mala and his brothers arrived on Earth, where, as part of their treacherous scheme to “rule all earthmen,” they soon succeeded in using their extraordinary “scientific genius” to construct a diabolical machine designed to hypnotize Earth’s population into mindless obedience with greatly “intensified light waves.” Superman destroyed the machine and battled the villains, and although it appeared for a time as though the outnumbered Superman might go down in defeat, ultimately he succeeded in duping the villains into battling among themselves, so that, with their awesome super-strength temporarily exhausted, he could shut them inside another space-capsule prison and exile them once again into the farthest reaches of outer space. (S No. 65,Jul-Aug 1950: "Three Supermen from Krypton!")

In July 1954, however, a chance collision with an asteroid freed Mala and his brothers from their space-capsule prison, and while Kizo and U-Ban immediately headed toward Saturn “for a vacation from trouble,” Mala decided to return to Earth to wreak vengeance on Superman. Mala’s convoluted scheme of revenge involved luring Superman to a duplicate of the planet Earth, a so-called “counterfeit Earth”, that he himself has constructed in outer space, so that, with Superman thus preoccupied, Male could destroy the real Earth without interference from Superman. The plot became even more complex when Mala, who was completely ignorant of the fact that Clark Kent was secretly Superman, attempted to complicate life for the Man of Steel by posing as Clark Kent and then admitting he is Superman, a ploy that, for a time, created serious difficulties for the Man of Steel by threatening to betray his dual identity.

Ultimately, with Superman lured safely away to his artificial Earth in outer space, Mala summoned Kizo and U-Ban from Saturn to help him obliterate the Earth, but Superman returned to the real Earth in the nick of time, and, through an elaborate ruse of his own, succeeded in trapping the three Kryptonian outlaws inside yet another space-capsule prison and in exiling them once again into outer-space. (Act No. 194, Jul 1954: “The Outlaws from Krypton!”) (TGSB)