YES!
...and it only took ten pages.
Dr. Mystic (Dr. Occult) appeared as a red-caped hero with a special symbol on his chest, a special belt wearing detective, who called forth a phantom army, was able to grow to the size of buildings, and fought bad guys and monsters across the astral plane in a mystical story called "Koth and The Seven".
The first part of the Koth story appeared in Comics Magazine #1 (May 1936) from a publisher of the same name, which later became Centaur Publishing.
Dr. Occult had already appeared in New Fun Comics #6 (October 1935)
and other prior comic books as a "Dick Tracy style" detective. Dick Tracy was created in 1931, and there was nothing particularly new about the early stories of Dr. Occult as a suited, trenchcoat, and fedora hat wearing detective solving mysteries and crimes.
It was in the five-part, ten-page 1936 story entitled "Koth and The Seven" that two comic book creators named Jerome Siegel and Joe Shuster (yes, the same two men who first published Superman in 1938) told a different kind of story for "The Occult Detective" named Dr. Mystic.
The hero teamed up with a friend named Zator to battle the evil Koth, traveling faster than the speed of light through the spirit world.
Koth had arrived on Earth in a crashed ship from another planet, which sounds and looks a lot like another version of that story made famous a couple of years later in Action Comics #1.
Battling Koth and his henchmen, Dr. Occult grabs the "magic belt" and pressed a button to be launched into the air, and another button turns a henchman to stone.
"Koth and The Seven" began outside of D.C. Comics, which might explain the differences in abilities, story-telling, and the name "Dr. Mystic" a few months before the story was continued in More Fun Comics #14 - #17 with Siegel and Shuster using the names "Leger and Reuths". Dr. Mystic returned to the name "Dr. Occult" in More Fun Comics.
Following the "Koth and The Seven" storyline, Dr. Occult stories were once again told in the Dick Tracy style, including vampires and werewolves, but no more red capes, special belts, or returning to the mystic realm of The Seven to fight a villain who arrived in a crashed spaceship. The mastermind villain Koth also happened to be bald. Sound familiar?
It is generally recognized that Dr. Mystic as shown in "Koth and The Seven" is a prototype Superman story published two years earlier by the same creators. Superhuman qualities and superhero story elements for Dr. Mystic which were different from other Dr. Occult stories became standards for storytelling in many superhero comics of the following decades.
It is possible that the positive reaction to "Koth and The Seven" allowed Jerome Siegel and Joe Shuster to convince D.C. Comics to publish Superman as the star of Action Comics, bringing back the red cape, superhuman abilities, faster-than-light (or at least faster than a speeding bullet) travel, and the character origin with a crashed spaceship from another planet.
The special belt with various buttons may have inspired Batman's stories, since it is well-documented that D.C. Comics creators were certainly reading each other's work and often borrowed story elements from each other. It was the January 1938 issue of More Fun Comics #28 which showed a later Dr. Occult story with a familiar outline and a name that could have been re-purposed for a new hero in Detective Comics #27 more than a year later.
While everything about Dr. Mystic in "Koth and The Seven" is not necessarily an original creation of Siegel and Shuster, earlier characters also wore capes, others fought monsters before Dr. Mystic, etc., enough elements are unique and combined within the Koth story to qualify as a 1936 prototype superhero, created and published by the same two men who published Superman in 1938.
READ THE COMPLETE TEN-PAGE STORY BELOW FOR
KOTH AND THE SEVEN - STARRING DR. MYSTIC (DR. OCCULT)
By the end of 2022, only 12 copies of Comics Magazine #1 from 1936 had been certified by third-party comic book grading company CGC. Action Comics #1 (1938, first Superman) had been certified 78 times, and Detective Comics #27 (1939, first Batman) had been certified 77 times.
Special thanks to multiple websites for making the 85+ year old story page scans available, and for telling the story of Dr. Occult for years before this page was created as fan information and review.
DrOccult.com is a part of the Comics2020.com Network, which believes that "hindsight is 20/20" and looking back at comic books with fresh eyes will find those facts and stories that have been forgotten or just overlooked and bring them back to light for learning in the 21st century.