This reprint comic has the SHIELD stories from STRANGE TALES #146 and #147 (1966), “When the Unliving Strike” and “The Enemy Within”, knocking out parts of two pages in the former and the first two full pages of the latter story bringing it down to 21 pages. Both stories have layouts by Kirby, pencils by Don Heck and inks by Mike Esposito (whose name the reprint editor actually took the time to fix from the “Mickey Demeo” pen-name of the original).

It’s the men of SHIELD against the forces of Them this time, continuing their pursuit from the previous issues. But of course you know those yellow bee-suit costumes better as…

AIM, Advanced Idea Mechanics. It turns out the Them are affiliated with AIM, a private group of geniuses bent on world domination, who at this point are still considered a reputable organization, as one of their members tries to undermine Fury’s role as director of SHIELD. Fury foils their immediate plans, an attack on the famous barber shop which serves as a SHIELD front, but AIM’s Count Royale has other schemes.

Some fun stuff in here. A few hints of Kirby, though the Heck/Esposito combination overpowers most of it, but is good in its own right.

Published 1973

Some great alien creatures on this Kirby/Ditko cover. I especially love the sample from Saturn. Plus the usual crazy Kirby tech over on the ray gun.

(possibly Ayers inks, see comments)

Published 1963

Machine Man continues his battle with Ten-For, who runs out to be craftier than expected, fooling the army into thinking he’s peaceful and Machine Man is violent while waiting for his invasion fleet to arrive. MM gives up on humanity thanks to this ploy, and then ends up as a costume party. Very strange stuff.

Meanwhile, the Autocron fleet gets the message from Ten-For and prepares for their invasion.

Bit of an odd-layout on pages 2-3. They’re meant to be read as a two page spread, but without any of the usual visual cues except a really small unclear arrow, so you almost invariably read the panels in the wrong order. I wonder if part of this was originally meant to be a two-page spread, but then shrunk down and reformatted. Doesn’t seem likely, as the 17-page story length had been standard for quite a while at this point (shrinking page counts had led to such reformatting in some other 1970s work, like an issue of OMAC).

Mike Royer inks the 17-page story, Klaus Janson inks the cover and Kirby writes a text page, “Would You Like a Machine to Fight Your Battles?”.

Published 1978

Two Kirby reprints in this issue, plus a short note about the monster books in the text pages from Kirby, his last work for Marvel according to the Kirby Checklist. In this piece he talks about working on the story and how they served as an evolutionary step to the Marvel super-heroes of the 1960s, like the rock monsters from “Thorr” showing up in the first Thor story, plus similar ideas in Hulk, X-Men and FF.

“Save Me From the Weed” is reprinted from STRANGE TALES #94 (1962) is this 6-page Kirby/Ayers story. Previously covered in this 1970s reprint. Still one of my favourites of the genre.

“I Fought the Colossus” is a 5-page Kirby/Ditko story from STRANGE TALES #72 (1959). A scientist builds a massive super-intelligent computer that can project the future and guide humanity to paradise. After a few years, the computer secretly builds a giant robot, which everyone assumes is a weapon with which it plans to conquer humanity.

The original designer is able to destroy the robot, only to find out after, in an ironic twist, that the robot was actually meant to serve man. But wait, it’s a cookbook! Oh, sorry, that’s another story…

Not one of the best, but the art is nice. Also, world balloon on the first page.

This issue also has an original Ditko cover, with many of the monsters that appeared in the MONSTER MASTERWORKS reprint volume of a few years earlier, plus two Ditko solo reprints.

Published 1994

An undercover Global Peace Agency investigator reveals the fruits of his investigation to OMAC, a criminal organization that has stolen a machine that can switch minds, and plans to sell the technology to rich old people who want young bodies. Of course, that’s as far as the GPA can go, since they can’t use violence. But they can ask OMAC to use violence all they want, apparently. OMAC and the GPA agent get attacked, giving us the excuse for the Brother Eye wizardry of the issue, protecting them and faking the scene so it looks like they were killed.

OMAC then traces the criminal organization, bringing in the GPA to mop up after he’s done.

I’m finding I like these OMAC stories more every time I read them. While a fairly minor Kirby creation in the grand scheme, there’s a lot of energetic fun and clever ideas in every issue.

Inks by D. Bruce Berry on the cover and 20-page story.

Published 1974

Chris Rule inks Jack Kirby on this early cover on the series. Amusing looking tease for the story, with everyone looking on not knowing what they’re seeing is real. Nice alien robots, too.

Joe Sinnott drew the interior story that goes with this cover.

Published 1959

Following the events of the previous issue, OMAC heads down the subway in pursuit of kidnappers who steal young bodies to sell to the old rich. One of those non-stop action bits with a few weird concepts thrown in. I love that classic style Kirby tech in the medical equipment, and of course OMAC busting through a wall shaking off a crowd of villains is excellent (although the one exclaiming that “He’s a one-man army” seems a bit forced).

D. Bruce Berry inks the cover and the 18-page story. This was in the era of rapidly shrinking page counts at DC, so the two-page spread meant for pages 2/3 was shrunk down to a single panel on what was page 4. The original panel that was replaced appears in TJKC #17.

Published 1975

Devil’s battle against the alien invaders continues, as he thinks the captive Moon-Boy is dead. With White-Hair and Stone-Hand, Devil realizes that the Swarmers (giant ants) who inhabit the Tower of Death have the power and numbers to take on the invaders, and manages to get the invaders to destroy the Tower, causing the Swarmers to attack in mass.

Odd, since I’m picking these randomly, that so many cool Kirby insect comics have come up in the past few weeks.

Mike Royer inks the 17-page story, and one strange thing I noticed. See that thick border on the final panel? Every single page in the story has one panel with a border like that, kind of a weird form of visual boldface for the panels. I wonder if that was something Royer did on his own, or something Kirby indicated, or a Marvel thing. Are there any other Kirby comics from that era which have that effect? Joe Sinnott inks the cover.

Published 1978

Kamandi and Ben Boxer make their way up to Canada and “The Heights of Abraham”, now home to giant mutated birds, insects and plants. And it hasn’t escaped the grasp of Sacker…

Lots of big art in this issue, with great scenes like Kam and Ben hitching a ride on a giant bird, the lush mutant plantlife in Quebec, all sorts of giant insects (including more of Kliklak’s species) and ending with the introduction of the British bulldog soldier and his giant ant, setting up one of my favourite Kamandi stories in the following issues.

D. Bruce Berry inks the 20-page story and cover, and Kirby handles the letter column himself this issue, interestingly running a lot more critical letters than normal. Also some weird answers. “But save me a lollipop, too, unless you want me to cry real loud and wake up your grandmother”.

Published 1975

“Hell at Hialeah” is the action-packed middle of the “Sackers” saga in KAMANDI finds out hero enslaved at a racetrack in what was once Florida, part of the empire of the snake trader Sacker (people have read some allegorical bits into this story about Kirby’s feelings towards DC at this time, and they’re probably there, but at its core it’s an action story). Lots of fun, as Kam goes from being almost trampled in a horse-race to witnessing a motorcycle race with an odd prize and violent rules:

Somehow Kirby can sell dialogue like “I’d rather ‘Do or Die’ for Kamandi Enterprises’ than the Sacker’s Company”.

The story just gets more exciting with Kamandi chased by helicopters while riding his giant grasshopper pet Kliklak and then finally being drawn into battle with one of the savage humans, Bull Bantam, who sees Kamandi as a rival for Spirit, the sister of Kamandi’s recently deceased love Flower.

Mike Royer inks the 20-page story and cover.

Published 1974

And thanks to James Burns for the new logo uptop, inspired by Kirby’s wayout tech designs