Feature Comics #84 (1945)

Out west, Darrel Dane and Martha Roberts are attending a rodeo, featuring a deadly bronco named Broncho. There's a thousand dollar prize for any rider who can stay aboard him for 30 seconds, and one young cowboy, Billy Hazel from Texas, tries to win it. He does win, and with such ease that at least one cowboy onlooker (Pete Shelton) finds it suspicious. It soon turns out that this suspicious onlooker has just recently had his girlfriend (Gloria Dare) stolen by this same Billy Hazel; fisticuffs ensue. The fight is quickly broken up by other cowboys, but some deadly anger is bubbling up on both sides, and Darrel Dane expects bad trouble to come out of this. After the show he visits the backstage area of the arena, where he hears a woman's scream. Darrel compresses all the molecules of his body into the compact and dynamic form of Doll Man! Also he changes from his blue business suit to Doll Man's outfit. Doll Man slides under the dressing-room door and finds a young man, dressed in the same clothes we just saw Billy Hazel wearing, plus a full-face mask, standing over a dead showgirl, gloating, with a smoking gun in his hand. Doll Man disarms him and plants a flying punch on his chin, but he stays on his feet and runs away, vaults over a fence into a corral full of bulls, grabs one, and rides it to a quick escape! Doll Man follows only a short way into the pen before the stamping bulls become too dangerous, and he jumps back out. The next night, just before showtime, Shelton and Hazel hurl accusations of murder at each other, then go out to perform. Shelton does an extremely dangerous two-bull-riding stunt; the crowd goes wild; Darrel Dane forms a suspicion. He confers with the rodeo's manager (Mr. Daniel), who vouches for Pete, having known him his whole life. Then the manager gets a report from his horse wrangler (Tom); Broncho is acting very strangely. Daniel dismisses this as just the sulky side of a temperamental animal, but Darrel follows the trainer back to the stable. There he finds the masked rider, attacking Tom with a "pigging string." Doll Man intervenes, seconds too late, and after a short scuffle, the masked rider has escaped again, and Tom is dead. The following night's performance is again attended by Darrel Dane. Billy Hazel is performing a bulldogging stunt when suddenly his saddle strap breaks. Doll Man leaps into the arena and aboard Hazel's runaway horse, and takes the reins, enabling Billy to carry on with his bulldogging stunt. He tackles the bull and takes it down, but seemingly forgets to finish tying its hooves, with a pigging string. Doll Man remarks on this, Billy dissembles, then accuses Pete Shelton of cutting the strap, but Doll Man has already worked out that Hazel is the killer, and accuses him, in detail, of a series of crimes, including doping the bronco. Hazel tries to flee on horseback, then climbs the rodeo's billboard, with Doll Man in close pursuit the whole time. At the top of the big sign, Billy tries to stomp Doll Man, and does manage to kick him loose from the sign, momentarily, but Billy falls to his death.