Kirby’s finishes up his stint on the adventures of T’Challa this issue, ending on a cliff-hanger to be resolved by the following creative team. Well, at least it’s better than OMAC’s “and then everything blew up” paste-up ending…

Pretty good story despite the lack of an ending. T’Challa still has his ESP powers as a result of exposure to vibranium in his previous adventure, and gets a message from his captured cousin Khanata about the villainous Kiber, a mad scientist type who is conducting strange experiments in matter-transmission and conversion of matter to energy.

The Panther goes to the rescue, allowing himself to be captured by Kiber’s minions so that he can lead a mass escape by the other captives while he goes to confront the real Kiber behind the image.

Kirby has a lot of fun with the effects of characters walking through walls and doing other highly irregular things thanks to their energy states this issue.

Mike Royer inks the 17-page story. The cover is one of those uncertain ones. The Kirby Checklist has Klaus Janson, which doesn’t seem implausible if the JUNGLE ACTION #18 from a few years earlier is also Janson, but there’s nothing really distinctive to make an identification easy.

Published 1978

This is the last of the THOR covers that Kirby did during his 1970s stint at Marvel. A shame, then, that it’s one of those where someone at Marvel decided that Kirby’s Thor didn’t look right. Say what you will about DC, but at least there’s a reference point for saying Kirby’s Superman and Jimmy Olsen look wrong…

Despite that, it’s a pretty good Kirby/Sinnott cover, with the stone texture really coming across nicely.

Published 1977

Kirby and Chic Stone team-up for this memorable little early Iron Man cover. I especially like the detailed work on the dragon over on the back wall. The steps that lead directly to the pit of doom are a nice touch, too.

Published 1964

Jack Kirby and Frank Giacoia provide this cover to a quick spin-off super-team from the then-new INVADERS series. A nice piece, always good to see the Skull done by Kirby, and the retro-designs of the new heroes fits in nicely with Kirby’s style.

This is one of the covers that will presumably be in the upcoming INVADERS CLASSIC VOL. 1 collection.

Published 1976

This issue features a reprint of the 10-page Captain America story from TALES OF SUSPENSE #94 [1967], the Kirby/Sinnott story that introduced the world to the glory that is MODOK.

More importantly, someone had the good sense to enlist recently-returned-to-Marvel Jack Kirby to do a new cover for the issue. The original featured MODOK as almost an afterthought, stuffed in a corner of the background. This one, though…

MODOK in all his big-headed, floating-chair, brain-blasting glory. Can Cap possibly hope to survive?

Frank Giacoia inks this cover.

Published 1976

This was a full issue reprint of the 1963 book where Iron Man was introduced. Kirby just did the cover, with Heck inks. Kirby is sometimes credited with doing more on the issue (plotting the Iron Man story, doing layouts for the art) but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Nice cover, anyway, Always thought it was interesting that Spider-Man was part of the hype on the cover, given that his first issue just came out that same month.

The Iron Man stuff in there has been reprinted in a lot of other places, of course, but this is still worth picking up for the less common Colan and Ditko stories included.

Published 1993

This issue reprints the 13-page Kirby/Ayers Torch story from STRANGE TALES #104 [1963], “The Human Torch Meets Paste-Pot Pete”. Yes, Paste-Pot Pete, the villain whose name is three kinds of stupid (the Paste-Pot nonsense, giving your real name in your villain identity and the annoying alliteration).

Johnny first runs into Pete at a bank, where he’s unable to act openly for fear of revealing his identity. Yes, this was when he briefly tried to keep a secret identity. He does manage to send out a flame-double of himself to follow Pete, not a power (creating doubles that apparently can act with some independence) that you see him use much later. Clearly there were still feeling out the character at the time.

The Torch eventually catches up with Pete as he’s moved on quickly from bank robbery to theft of experimental military missiles. The Torch is briefly pasted to one as his flame fails, but escapes. Pete manages to escape before being captured, left to ponder where he went wrong. Surprisingly it would take a while before he figures out that his name is one of the place.

The early Torch solo stories are all over the map, and this is one of the weaker ones in terms of the story, but the Kirby/Ayers artwork is, by contrast, excellent stuff.

Published 1975

I guess since the Inhumans backups originally appeared in the unusual place of the back pages of THOR #146 – #152, it makes sense that reprints of them have also popped up in unusual places, like behind Spider-Man reprints in MARVEL TALES, or three of them in this special designed to promote a now long-forgotten crossover. The first two and the final episode of the 5-page Kirby/Sinnott back-ups are included in this issue.

“The Origin of the Incomparable Inhumans” is the first, starting with a splash page of the current royal family before going back to a pre-historic time to show us a far more advanced civilization that existed alongside savage early humans, and had to flee to the island refuge of Attilan.

There they discovered the Terrogen Mists, and their monarch Randac decided that the logical thing to do would be to expose himself to them first, becoming the first Inhuman.

“The Reason Why” explains a bit more as a Kree Sentry arrives in Attilan and reveals that their advanced evolution was the result of Kree experiments, and meets Randac as he emerges from the Terrigan Mists (they apparently changed the spelling while he was in there) with his new powers. Of course, as shown when the margin notes for the story were printed in THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #21, this is quite a different story from what Kirby actually wrote.

They skip to the end for the final 5-page Inhumans story, “While the City Shrieks”. After causing some mischief at sea, reported in the papers a “sea monster”, Triton arrives in New York, where humanity responds with fear and violence. To be fair, they have a point regarding some of his behaviour. He returns home and convinces Black Bolt that they’ll have to move from their island home or risk eventual discovery, hence the mountain location of the “Great Refuge” in then-modern stories.

All these stories look gorgeous, of course, with the Kirby/Sinnott combo at its prime with their slick high-energy style. The stories don’t work quite as well, whether because of those changes from the original notes or just the nature of filling in background instead of going forward, but they do have their moments. Unfortunately, it looks like that run of backups has been an orphan in Marvel’s current reprints, unless I missed them somewhere, as they didn’t show up when those issues were reprinted in ESSENTIAL THOR (despite the table of contents listing Sinnott as inker on those issues), so presumably won’t when the MASTERWORKS volumes of Thor get that far.

Most of the rest of the contents of this issue are related to then-current goings on in the FF related books, but there is a 4-page article on “Marvel’s Top 10 Monsters” with some nice images and story recaps of some old favourites like Monstrollo, Pildorr and Googam (son of Goom).

Published 1995