Nothing is known of the life of Russel Vardon before he joined the board of directors of a major bank in Washington DC and became chairman of the local chapter of the Liars' Club, a social organization that made sport of spinning fictitious tales for the members entertainment.  In 1942, Cliff Henry introduced Ted Knight to the millionaire Vardon to induct him to the Club, which Vardon did in June of that year.   Knight opens with the story that he likes to put on a fantastic costume and fight crime as Starman, eliciting uproarious laughter from the other members.   Rolling with it, Vardon says that Starman is actually a criminal and that he himself had been murdered by Starman.  The other members extended  the joke, each claiming to killed by Starman in different ways.  Vardon ended that session but saying it would be a real joke if all their lies came true.

That evening, a distraught Cliff Henry awakens Knight from a deep sleep to reveal that Vardon's lie had become true and that he had in fact been killed by Starman!  Knight - actually being Starman -  was immediately skeptical and flew to intercede.  He found Henry at the Vardon estate and after confronting him, investigated the house,  There he found a device of swirling hypnotic globes that quickly put him to sleep.  From the shadows emerged the owner of the device, who identified himself as The Veil and instructed the now hypnotized Starman to kill Cliff Henry.   Henry, fearing for his life, take flight in a personal plane with Starman in hot pursuit.  When the Astral Avenger moves in the for kill, the rotating blades of the propeller remind him of the globes and snap the spell, removing his hypnosis just in time for Henry to complete his escape.

The following day, Henry spreads word of his encounter with Starman and the tale spreads like wildfire. The other members of the Liars Club, themselves members of the same bank board as Vardon, begin to panic.  Everts - who predicted that he would shoot himself with his own gun to spite Starman - barricades himself in his home but the Veil sets it on fire and the heat causes Everts' gun to fire.  For good measure, the Veil also shoots Everts just as Starman arrives.  Everts is not mortally wounded, however, and suspecting a hidden hand, Starman takes the gun to police ballistics department where they identify it as a .45 caliber pistol, while the bullet removed from Everts is .44 caliber.  He could not have shot himself with his own gun, convincing Starman that another agency was at work.

Racing to the last member from the Liars Club's home, he finds Carver - who had joked that Starman would drown him - dying in his bathtub.  He drags him and resuscitates him, just as Cliff Henry arrives and accuses him of murder.  Castigating the frivolous Henry, he leaves Carver and flies to the Vardon estate with a mirror in hand.  As he had concluded, the Veil was hiding in Vardon's home waiting to ambush Starman with his hypnotic globe device.   When Starman holds up a mirror,  the output of the globes reflects back on the Veil, who smashes the device as he tries to flee.  Starman quickly catches and subdues him, revealing that the Veil is in fact Vardon himself.  The banker had been stealing funds and planned to murder his colleagues to cover his theft, faking his own death to draw attention to Starman while he fled the country (Adventure Comics #75).

While presumably turned over to the police by Starman, the eventual fate of the Veil on Earth-Two is unknown.