Who's This? An evil Howdy Doody.
The facts: Created by Mort Weisinger and Mort Meskin in Leading Comics #1 (December 1941), the Dummy - a crime boss who looked like a ventriloquist dummy - became a recurring opponent of the original Vigilante through the Golden Age. Jump to 1977 and the Dummy murders Vigilante's sidekick, Stuff, in the pages of World's Finest #246. Then in the 80s, he's part of Mr. Mind's Earth-2 Monster Society of Evil (really, the biggest villain in there aside from the worm genius). Roy Thomas implies he's actually made of wood, but that didn't stick. In the present-day, he takes over Justice Unlimited in the pages of Infinity Inc. History is rewritten in Vigilante: City Lights, Prairie Justice (1995-1996) where he is NOT responsible for Stuff's death and is killed long before he can fight Infinity Inc.
How you could have heard of him: Rebirth introduced a new depiction of the Dummy - now an actual Victorian dummy given life by a wizard - in the pages of Shazam (so again with the Monster Society of Evil). He doesn't survive an encounter with Superboy-Prime there. The Dummy makes cameos in Justice League Unlimited and The New Frontier animated film.
Example story: Action Comics #69 (February 1944) "The Little Men Who Were There" by Joseph Samachson, Mort Meskin and Joe Kubert
This particular engagement between the Dummy and "Vig" starts when the diminutive gangster suddenly appears inside a train's mail car and robs it blind. I'd say he was simply hiding inside a mail bag, but he has two henchmen with him!
He leaves Vigilante a challenge in the form of a clue to his next caper. "What goes up must come down" makes our hero think of airplanes, so he and Stuff hop on one with a precious cargo. But how is the Dummy going to get on a plane in flight? Would you believe: a shrinking ray?
The Dummy' takes his gimmick even further! But this time, the Vigilante is aboard, and though the Dummy throws goons at him, he's not above getting in on the fight too.
Stuff then gives him a quick kick in the butt (oh, the indignity!) and the villains bail out with parachutes. They land right in front of a police station, which could have been the end of the story, but the Dummy steals a police car and they make a clean getaway. Except that Vig is following them in the plane (screw those deliveries!) and then on a borrowed scooter. The Dummy is no dummy though (well, that's a mouthful) and knows very well that his archnemesis is right on his tail. He WANTS the Vigilante to find his hide-out in a blacksmith shop. Because that's where he keeps the shrinking ray!
The Vig packs a wallop even at smaller size, but then they shrink further and are more easily man-handled. The death trap seems to be a now-giant chicken (why is there a chicken coop at a blacksmith's?), but they lassoo it and paint a white line to hypnotize it into submission (the things I've learning about rural life here!). And it's out of the coop and to the machine. As they turn it on their captors, the size differential starts to equalize and our heroes make short work of the Dummy and his cronies, with the boss himself getting horseshoed but good.
And they are all of course delivered in a bird cage, at a size the cops can easily handle.
A fun story, and the Dummy, while he could be anyone, at least has a good visual and works within a theme.
Who's Next? Two who were three.
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