I'm currently working on a Miss Quantum video and wanted to specifically flag three different instances of villain ray gun for future reference. I'm gonna start looking up sci-fi ray guns, their designs, inspirations, and then come back to this and speculate about why these guys chose their particular ray gun and why. (I also want it as reference for giving my own fan character gremlin a show-accurate ray gun, lol).

Give me a week and I'm probably going to have something similar to my one-off excuse to talk about Bella Goth (Sims 2) and Professor Venomous in the same video. My brain is a loose ream of spaghetti noodles, Froot Loops, Monster energy, and colorful plastic beads thrown in somewhere. That's why it seems like I wander off into the weeds every so often with my projects (I've had people comment on how unfocused some of my essays can be and how my fics can meander. I'm still trying to work on reigning that in).

This is a public domain concept from the short story The Black Lamp by Sterner St. Paul Meek, originally published in the August 1931 edition of Astounding Stories of Super-Science magazine, which you can read for free here on Project Gutenberg.

This weapon concept is 100% free to use for literally anything you want. That's what Public Domain means.

It's a black light(?) that acts like a shroud or something and covers up electrical lights so you can't see, compared to putting black ink a bottle that had red ink. The red ink is still there, but you can't see it anymore.

It also causes "paralysis of the brain" as well as making you unable to talk while you're under its effect. The "paralysis of the brain" will make you comatose if exposed long enough.

It is cured by exposure to sunlight or other ultraviolet lights.

A small exposure makes you a little confused and makes you not able to talk above a breathy whisper and requires around an hour of standing under a UV light before you can talk audibly again. The confusion fades as soon as you have protection in the form of a vitriline helmet.

Those exposed to higher concentrations of the lamp have to be laid in sunlight and UV lamps for probably several days.

If they didn't know how the cure worked, we can assume people would eventually wake up on their own just from regular sunlight and other lights in whatever hospital they're in.

At a higher level, possibly with the help of other technology, the lamp can be turned into a ray weapon (they love their rays in the 1920s and 30s) with a red bean will turn living objects into glass statue that glow red from the inside. No known cure or treatment for this version yet.

It hasn't been revealed the exact nature of this lamp yet but I'll keep you posted.

Edit: almost forgot -- evidence of its use is that any non-vitriline glass nearby will become opaque. Short exposure makes it "foggy" like it's just dirty, longer, intense exposure makes the glass almost completely opaque.

STARTLING COMICS (vol. 1) #47 (September, 1947). Cover by Alex Schomburg.