Golden Age Heroes and Villains not magical

Ok, here is the origin of Steel Sterling. I think his origin is rather unique. Also a later story where he battles Inferno, who after this story becomes a good guy and has a short run as a hero of his own.

Naked Man warning! Very much pre-Comics Code.

He later develops the ability to fly without needing to follow electrical wires.  Maybe just using the Earth's natural magnetic field?  And the sound effect of him moving or flying quickly is almost always ZIP!, which is also the name of the primary comic book he appeared in.

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Pretty short range power, breathing fire, but strong.

One villains gives himself a new disguise and becomes another villain.

Not sure why you need sutures for snake bit but Oh Well, it's the 40s. Steel Sterling has another unusual power he uses at least 3 more times of the few stories I read, he can intercept radio transmissions by rubbing his tongue along his teeth. I will try to find a page of him doing that later.

http://www.herogoggles.com/mlj_villains.html

This is a list of MLJ comics villains. MLJ is the precursor to Archie Comics and are in the public domain. I'll try to track down the first stories of a couple of these guys, especially the Hun and Baron Gestapo.

Steel Sterling's radio reception power

The Wizard is a fictional superhero character created by Will Harr and Edd Ashe, Jr. for MLJ Comics, which later became Archie Comics. He first appeared in Top-Notch Comics #1 in December 1939, and he was one of the headliners of that title until its cancellation in 1944.[1] He was one of the earliest superhero characters to appear after the debut of Superman in 1938.

His real name is Blane Whitney, a man of great intelligence. He descends from a long line of men who fought for America in its wars, including General Steven Whitney who was General Washington's chief aide in the Revolutionary War (and it was later retroactively revealed that Blane was not the first Whitney to defend his country wearing the red mask and cloak of the Wizard during key events in early U.S. history[2]). At age 14, Blane met President Woodrow Wilson, who told him to use his brain only for good and not for evil. While in college, he was a superb athlete and student. His brother Grover, chief of the Naval Intelligence Service, usually informed him of enemy plots against America.[3] To aid him in his fight against these enemies, the Wizard had various contraptions and machines of his own design available to him, like a vibra-ray gun and a car that could reach up to 500 mph. He had several devices that enabled him to fly. Coming from a rich family, he also had airplanes and submarines at his disposal.[4]

At first, the Wizard, similar to other MLJ superheroes like the Black Hood and the Firefly, did not possess superpowers but was merely a man with great physical and mental prowess. He eventually, however, started to exhibit superhuman strength and a "Super Brain" that gave him a photographic memory and "supersensory perception" that enabled him to psychically "see" distant places, people and events, as well as a talent for hypnosis and telepathy. He also started consuming capsules containing secret formula F22X that replenished his super-strength. In his final appearances, however, he had no powers other than his clairvoyant visions.

In his early appearances, the Wizard wore a tuxedo and cape, thus he was similar in appearance to Mandrake the Magician (a resemblance made even more obvious by his dashing pencil thin moustache). At first, his cape and mask were white, but they were soon switched to a more striking red. During the Moskovia Invasion crossover storyline (which featured the Shield) where he was briefly blinded by an enemy attack, he developed a bullet-proof, explosion-resistant costume that consisted of blue tights with red trunks, cape, and mask. He wore this costume for the remainder of his Golden Age appearances.[5]

The enemies of America that the Wizard faced in each adventure were usually from a fictitious country, like Jatsonia (in his first appearance) and Bundonia, but due to facial features or accents made apparent in speech balloons, these enemies were obvious, unflattering caricatures of Germans, Soviets, or Japanese.

Usually, after each adventure, the last panel would feature a note from the Wizard that read: "Our country / right or wrong / our country / The Wizard."

After several months of publication, the Wizard was given a kid sidekick named Roy Carter. Admiring the lad's courage when he saw the blond orphan bootblack leap to defend a mugging victim from several thugs, Blane took him in, clad him in a red and white striped polo shirt with a large blue collar, blue trunks, white sneakers, and a red mask, and dubbed him Roy the Super Boy, training him until he had the strength of ten men.[3][6] Roy would later join the Shield's sidekick Dusty in the super-duo known as the Boy Buddies.[7]

Blane Whitney also had a girlfriend named Jane Barlowe who was a reporter at the Daily Citizen, a newspaper Blane had inherited from a murdered friend.[8] She was often disgusted with his polo-playing playboy lifestyle but developed an attraction to his superheroic alter-ego, creating an odd love triangle that is quite common in comic books (i.e. Superman/Lois Lane/Clark Kent, Hal Jordan/Carol Ferris/Green Lantern).

The Wizard was popular enough to receive a second publication alongside another MLJ superhero, The Shield. Shield-Wizard Comics first appeared with a Summer, 1940 cover date.[9] He started sharing cover appearances of Top-Notch Comics with the Black Hood, an indication of waning popularity. Top-Notch was converted into a humorous publication in 1942, but the Wizard continued to appear in Shield-Wizard Comics until its cancellation in Spring, 1944.

Many of MLJ's characters were very lopsided as to their abilities from issue to issue. I think maybe because too many writers were doing the strips so there was no real consistency in powers. The Wizard loses all these gadgets shown in the above story pretty quickly. Roy the Superboy's strength seemed to diminish over time as well so by the last few years of the strip, 1942-44, both of them were pretty much non-powered or highly human max powered beyond the Wizard's clairvoyance and telepathy. Which is why I think he would be a good character for a hero in the 450-900 range to team up with. Maybe he went into a personally induced trance and stayed that way, not aging until he comes out of it in modern times. One of the funny things about this strip is that he tried marrying his newspaper reporter girlfriend a number of times and always at the church something prevented him from marrying her. In one story, SHE ran out on the wedding just before saying her vows because a big story had just broke over the radio and she ran out to cover it.

The Shield was interesting as he was one of their strongest characters alongside Steel Sterling when it came to strength prior to WW2. Then the editors decided to take away his super-strength and his super-suit which was burn-proof, bomb-proof and bullet-proof just as the war broke out. So he became a Captain America wannabe, which is strange because he was in print 6 months before Captain America was published, pretty much the very first patriotic designed character in American comics. I halfway wonder if they were worried about being sued by DC as too much like Superman though there really isn't anything to compare other than strength. BTW, the Shield got his super-strength through a super-soldier serum too.

Outside of Captain America and the Guardian, I think the Hun is the only other shield user in the 1940s.