What's This? A guy with a gong.
The facts: Though this interstellar menace principally fought the Justice League of America, as of #3 of their series (February 1961) by Gardner Fox and Mike Sekowsky, Ro would also become tied to Adam Strange, trying to conquer Rann a number of times. He eventually proved successful, involving the planet in the first Rann-Thanagar War. Hawkworld retconned him as an enslaver of the Thanagarians, ditching a lot of the crazy tech he employed. Hawkworld was eventually invalidated, restoring him to JLA levels, and he started showing up in JLA, Green Lantern Corps, and R.E.B.E.L.S. as a proper threat.
How you could have heard of him: He is still appearing today, for example in the first issue of the most recent GLC series, though his facial features aren't as extreme as they used to be. He appeared in an episode of the Justice League animated series, voiced by René Auberjonois, as well as in The Brave and the Bold, and Green Lantern: First Flight.
Example story: Mystery in Space #75 (May 1962) "The Planet That Came to a Standstill!" by Gardner Fox, Carmine Infantino and Murphy Anderson
Last seen on a prison asteroid with his homologues from other worlds (Hyathis is the only "name" villain there), Kanjar Ro (no relation to a certain Bajoran ensign) pools his willpower with theirs to break Green Lantern's shield, and then it's adios amigos!
No honor among thieves, truly. The Justice League don't make good jailers, though. They never thought to take his "energi-rod" (really, is that what we're going with?). We might give them a pass on the tiny model of his "cosmic boat", not realizing it was more than a toy. But though it's a big galaxy, Ro needs to have his revenge and face the JLA again, except this time he'll make himself more powerful than all of them put together. His plan is as batshit crazy as his ride: He'll find a planet that has the same effect on HIS physiology that Earth has on Superman's. One with triple suns, so he can be three times as powerful as Superman. And that planet, folks, is Rann. Cue some Adam Strange shenanigans that eventually lead him and Alanna to the ancient ruins of Vardana, where Ro rules over a barbarian horde and is experimenting on himself with triple-sun radiation. It's bearing fruit.
While Adam and Alanna make like docile captured slaves and work in the lab, they witness Ro take regular rad baths until he's able to destroy his robot Justice League.
One night, Strange tries to sneak up on Ro, which gives the alien no choice but to disintegrate him--no, actually, let's save those energies for real threats. Ro only uses his Gamma Gong which, according to the Who's Who entry, can freeze AN ENTIRE PLANET'S population. Who would even need powers?
Alanna, sneaking behind Adam, isn't affected because it's all about how hard you hit the gong, so this must have been the lightest of taps. Both heroes are sent to high-gravity chairs from which they can't escape. (Spoiler: They do.) Adam, in fact, steals the cosmic ship and "rows" to Earth... just to catch the Zeta Beam? He was free of it since he'd last gone to Rann on a ship, so why this maneuver (except as a possible status quo reset)? But he hides the space gondola badly and the Flash comes across it. The JLA check it out, discover Kanjar Ro has escaped their prison, and his buddies sell him out - I guess he talked about Rann's triple suns in his sleep. Meanwhile, Adam flies back to Ro's stronghold and gongs the gong as hard as possible to freeze all life on the planet, himself included. Ah! So when he Zeta Beams back to Earth, he'll be free of its effects and return to a frozen world. Except it's likely frozen the Justice League members who went to help, oops! So he heads back in the cosmic ship with the other half of the League in tow, and starts to free specific people with Ro's "supersonic whistle", demonstrated earlier. But Ro has all those super-powers, right?
But the real Justice League isn't as easy to disintegrate as Ro's robot facsimiles. Especially since he decides to toy with them and NOT use his disintegrator vision. Although he has... de-evolution vision now?!
But here comes Adam Strange with the stolen energi-rod and Kanjar Ro suddenly feels a weakness and collapses. How? Well, you know how a piece of Krypton is toxic to Superman? Well, what if metal from Ro's home planet was now toxic to HIM? And the energi-rod was made of that metal. Yeah, okay, whatever. It's a Silver Age comic, go with it. Oh and the irony is that Ro's last power blast dosed Adam Strange with triple-sun radiation, and he can't stay on Rann for a year. And even if Green Lantern was able to undo everything with his ring, he can't do a thing here because the blast was so yellow. Like I said, Silver Age. Ro is left in a jail cell made of that particular metal (at least until his powers wear off) on Rann, and his weird-ass gadgets end up in the JLA souvenir room. The end.
This is like a lot of JLA stories of the era in that the villain can pretty much do anything so he's a credible threat, which in turn means he has to be undone in some ridiculously convoluted way that requires last-minute explanations. That may or may not be why I don't rate Kanjar Ro highly, but it sure doesn't help.
Who's Next? The future's best martial artist.
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