The first of three issues of the series Kirby drew late in his DC contract, written by Denny O’Neil. Among the few non-Kirby scripts Kirby drew in the 1970s, this series was probably the best, with some goofy pulp adventure. JUSTICE INC had the adventures of Richard Benson, aka The Avenger (title not used for the book for obvious reasons).

In this issue, Benson and his faithful aide Smitty come across a train which crashed when the tracks in front of it vanished. After dispatching some looters, they investigate further, though it doesn’t seem to quite be explained how their investigation takes them to the home of an inventor, Robert Gant, just as he’s being killed.

Gant’s papers lead them to businessman Abel Darcy, whe turns out to be behind the whole thing, having taken Gant’s inventions, a sound ray that makes steel fall apart and a process to make metal invisible, and the best way he can think of to make money with those is to destroy some buildings and then extort money from the city.

Yeah, the plot has a few holes, but it moves fast, leaves a lot of room for action and has some clever scripting.

Mike Royer inks the cover and the 18-page story.

Published 1975

More cosmic battle fun, as Thena confronts Kro and his forces attacking the city (and we find out that Thena had met Kro long ago, and Deviants aren’t usually so long lived).

They arrange a truce, which leads to the release of Sersi and Margo and Ikaris (though Sersi didn’t seem to be having much trouble with her captors) and Kro and the various Eternals go to see an anthropologist friend of Margo and explain the secrets of the role of Eternals and Deviants in human history and how sightings of them in the past had led to various human legends. They make a presentation announcing all of this before a group of college students, some of whom are skeptical, though Sersi demonstrating her powers by turning one of them into a dead-ringer for the Thing (with the dialogue vague about if he’s real or a comic character) dispels some of the doubts.

Meanwhile, some agents of SHIELD vanish while investigating the strange goings-on around the Fourth Hose in the Andes.

Not really my favourite issue of the series, as it seemed a bit of an odd resolution for a lot of the plots up to this point. It all seemed to be leading to a big confrontation, and what we get here doesn’t really fit. There were a few nice moment of humour in the script, though.

Mike Royer inks the 17-page story and Frank Giacoia inks the cover.
Published 1976

In “Darkseid and Sons” Kirby is forced to quickly wrap up part of the saga of the New Gods, confirming that Orion and Kalibak are half-brothers, both sired by Darkseid, along with some details about their past and the history of betrayal and assassination in the royal family of Apokolips.

The story sees Kalibak escape from where he was held by the authorities and head straight for Dave Lincoln’s place to confront Orion. Lightray decides to take a crack at him first, but proves fairly ineffective, so Orion attacks. The battle stirs the spirit of the Black Racer, who senses and impending death and rides to do his duty. The battle goes poorly for Orion until Darkseid realizes that DeSaad is feeding Kalibak energy while feeding off the emotion of the combatants, earning death by the Omega Effect. Orion and Kalibak face off for the final time, with the Black Racer ultimately taking Kalibak, and Orion finally accepts his birthright as son of Darkseid and vows to confront his father and end the war….

And then the last panel is an ad for KAMANDI. Go figure.

I’m pretty sure Kirby was aware that the series had been cut short while he was working on this issue, and it’s pretty remarkable that despite that he’s still fills it with a lot of energy and interesting character bits while bringing the story to as satisfying a conclusion as we have any right to expect under the circumstances.

Mike Royer inks the 22-page story and the cover.

Two STRANGE TALES reprints from 1966 in this issue, the SHIELD stories from #150 and #151. First up is “Hydra Lives”, with John Buscema making his return to Marvel, penciling over Kirby layouts, inking by Frank Giacoia.  Unfortunately two pages are edited out, making for some weird jumps and unexplained bits.  It’s not too bad looking, though parts of it don’t look like Buscema followed Kirby’s layouts at all (though some things, like the Overkill Horn, seem like pure Kirby).  Anyway, the story has Fury testing out a prototype of the “Overkill Horn”, a deadly sonic weapon that can potentially detonate atomic devices at a distance.  The test is explosive, putting both Fury and Dugan in wheelchairs (but not out of action) for a short while.  Nick then gets an invite to a party in the dead Egyptian city of Karnopolis by Don Caballero, who SHIELD suspects of being the new Supreme Hydra (“cut off a limb and two more shall take its place!”).  Nick heads off, leaving Jasper Sitwell in charge.

Next story is “Overkill”, this time with Jim Steranko making his Marvel debut over Kirby layouts (and my copy seems to be signed by Steranko on the splash page.  Or signed by someone, and Steranko is the only name in the credits I can twist this squiggle into.  Well, maybe Irving Forbush).   It’s really sharp looking, with a lot of nice dynamic bits and detailed settings.  It’s kind of shame that Steranko was “graduated” to full art so quickly, as I’d have liked to see what full Kirby pencils inked by him would have looked like.  Anyway, for some reason they decide to quickly abandon the “party” pretext (which probably would have made a good James Bond kind of scene, but I guess with only 12 pages an issue there was pressure to keep to action scenes) and Fury just arrives in Karnopolis and is attacked by walking statues and Hydra agents (Hail Hydra!).

He’s able to escape on an unguarded plane, not realizing that he was allowed to escape, and the plane carries the Overkill Horn.  I’m not sure I like how easily Fury was duped. Still, it all looks very good.
The cover is the Kirby/Steranko cover of ST #151.