Not satisfied with wealth, Clever long for revenge against Johnny Quick for prior defeats.  Learning of a charity boxing match in which Quick is taking all comers.  Watching from the side of the ring, they watch Quick rapidly dispatch 5 experienced boxers at once.  Clever sends Breezy to offer $1000 for a chance in the ring.  Breezy surprised the hero with his speed but Quick is much more experienced and gains the upper hand.  Breezy fakes injury to lure Quick in where he head-butts him at super speed, leaving him unconscious.  Declared the winner, Quick is taken out on a stretcher. 

Quick is loaded into a waiting ambulance that is not an ambulance, but a van in which he is carted off to Dr. Clever’s hideaway.  There he is place in a rotating metal cage which is to be heating to scaling temperature, roasting Quick alive.   

Gloating, Clever turns on the heat and leaves for his next crime.  He left too soon however, as Quick rapidly rotates that cage until the stress of speed tears it apart, freeing him.  Exploring Clever’s hideout, he finds a reversal ray that he suspect counteracts the effects of Clever’s speed ray.  In the meantime, Clever and Breezy have found a jewelry auction and as Breezy snatches a diamond necklace, Johnny Quick appears and makes short work of the startled henchman.  Dr. Clever pulls a bomb from his cloak which he threatens to detonate.  Before he can, Quick shines the speed reversal ray on him, grinding him speed to near paralysis.  An uppercut lifts Clever from his shoes and the two criminals, bereft of their advantage, are sped off to jail (More Fun Comics #76).

Shortly thereafter, Clever is being held in a prison cell when he has a henchmen disguised as a lawyer bring him a special pen.   The pen is in fact a poisonous air gun, which he promptly used on the thug.  Claiming his lawyer has had a heart attack, Clever lures in his guard who also promptly dispatch by what Clever calls Murder Method #23.  The dead guard is relieved of his keys and Clever burns a trail of death to the outside world, where his henchmen speed him away.

Secluded in his new hideout, Clever lays out a plan to methodically murder an aviation industrialist, throwing the stock market into a turmoil that Clever could exploit.  He has somehow acquired tools for murder that markedly resemble those of Mister Zero, tho the aged criminal is not mentioned and it’s not clear how Clever has adopted so similar a scheme.   He dispatches his thugs to an airfield to intercept and murder the industrialist but the timely arrival of Johnny Quick.  Following the trail back to Clever, Johnny is captured by murder method #999, a glass dome in which to be suffocated.  Clever leaves him to die and finish the job at the airfield.

Dr. Clever and his men don gas masks and flood the airfield with a poisonous sleeping gas that will kill within 30 minutes.  Johnny Quick, in the meanwhile, has struck the idea of spinning his body like a top, pressuring the dome and break it outward, freeing him.  In hot pursuit, Quick arrives and seeing the sleeping men, races around the hangar clearing the air.  In the main office, Clever and his men have cornered the leaders of the field brokering a new merger and as he threatens them Quick arrives.  Plugging the gas guns with hot dogs, the encumbers thugs are not match for the King of Speed.  Rapid fisticuffs later and Dr. Clever and his gang are on their way back to prison (More Fun Comics #78).

The following year, Clever was again on the loose and had learned of an armored car en route to Camp Calumet. As it happened, Johnny Quick was there putting on a show for the soldiers racing bullets and performing other feats of speed.  Two of Clever’s men are caught up in the crowd and insult Quick’s performance, leading to a scuffle with two soldiers.  The men escape and the soldiers return to their kitchen duties of peeling potatoes and washing dishes.

Later as Johnny Quick is again performing by crafting a replica of the Statue of Liberty, he is interrupted when a large stone smashes his work.  As he addresses the crowd, a radio held aloft by a balloon broadcasts ridicule of his efforts.  Realizing something is afoot, he follows Tubby’s clue that the soldiers on kitchen duty had witnessed hostile civilians.  Rapidly finishing their chores for them, Quick takes the two on a high speed tour around the camp to spy the two thugs they had tussled with before.  Seeing Quick, they flee but end up leading quick straight to Dr. Clever.

Clever is not unprepared however and quickly gases Quick into unconsciousness and then leaves to perform his intended task: Robbery of the armored car.  After subduing the guards, he changes his henchmen’s clothes into their uniforms and stations them at the gate.  Back in the camp, the two soliders from before smell gas and finding Quick, quickly revive him.  Racing toward the guardhouse, Quick finds Clever and his henchmen almost escaped with the goods.  A quick melee later, the guards are revived and it’s Clever and his gang’s turn to be out cold (More Fun Comics #89).

The later activities and ultimate fate of Dr. Clever are unknown.