Tode, leader of the Deviants, has decided that that big Celestial mothership out in orbit has to go, and sends up a giant bomb ship on a suicide mission. Meanwhile, NASA is also curious and sends up a shuttle to take photos of the ship. Meanwhile, the rest of the Eternals are busy in the Uni-Mind ritual, so Sprite is left to detect the danger and decides to enlist the help of the Forgotten One, a nameless Eternal exiled by Zuras for his pride and meddling in human affairs (and implied to be the source of various hero myths, I think he was made to be explicitly the source of the Gilgamesh story in later non-Kirby stories).

Sprite creates a space-suit and ship for the Forgotten One and then the representatives of the three races of Earth converge on the ship of the One Above All, who acts quickly and efficiently by switching the crews of the three ships, letting them each fulfill their missions after a fashion.

I think these side-stories in this series are often better than the main action with Ikaris and the others. Kirby clearly had a vast mythology that he only started to explore, and this issue has a nice sense of wonder and discovery.

Mike Royer inks the cover and 17-page story.

Published 1977

This issue reprints FANTASTIC FOUR #67 (1967), the second half of the storyline that introduces Him. It was mentioned in the KIRBY COLLECTOR a while back that this was a bit of a turning point on Kirby’s silver age run at Marvel, as his concept for this story was turned on its head when the first half was scripted, and after this point he created very few memorable new characters for Marvel in the next three years (while of course doing the concept art that would form the basis of the Fourth World).

Despite being a bit of a mid-course correction it’s still an entertaining story, as the FF work on how to follow the mysterious scientists who have kidnapped Alicia in order to use her blindness and artistic ability to study the mysterious creation in the “cocoon”.

That’s a great four-panel zoom on Alicia there. And of course Reed with his “working hard” beard growth.

Reed’s able to duplicate the wristband of the scientists (interestingly using technology that is pretty clearly nanotechnology, I believe several years before the expression existed) and the boys journey to the Citadel of Science and manage to rescue Alicia just as the cocoon opens and a golden figure who departs from a world not ready for him, destroying the Citadel in the process.

Joe Sinnott inks the cover and 20-page story.

Published 1974

Kirby begins another story in this issue, although one he wouldn’t be around to finish. T’Challa has been having dreams of an impending menace, as he seems to have new ESP powers following his exposure to the vibranium mound the previous issue, from which he’s still recovering.

Another of the royal family, Khanata, is captured by the mysterious Kiber, forcing T’Challa to go against medical advice and again don the costume of the Panther to rescue him.

This last bit of the Panther’s saga at Kirby’s hand isn’t my favourite, mostly because I know we never got Kirby’s ending to it. Kirby does still show a lot of enthusiasm in parts, though, so the art is nice.

Mike Royer inks the 17-page story and Joe Sinnott inks the cover.

Published 1978

Reprints of the Inhumans backup get to the tale of Black Bolt in this story from THOR #148 (1968). First it’s established that he’s a beloved ruler who keeps his people safe. Then we look back in time on the Historikon and find out that when he was an infant his ability to manipulate energy and matter was even greater than it is now, but he had a scream outside the sonic range that brings the house down.

Of course his own powers protect him, but obviously something is going to have to be done to protect everyone else from him.

I always thought the ideas behind the origin of Black Bolt were intriguing, but we really didn’t get more than a hint of them in these little 5-page snippits. A shame, as he’s a great character.

Joe Sinnott inks the 5-page story.

Published 1981

Anyway, as their second issue opens, the Forever People find themselves attracting attention as the Super-Cycle is blocking traffic. They phase-out to another area where they meet a young boy and his uncle, who Beautiful Dreamer pacifies by making them seem like clean-cut kids, and set up with them for a while. However, an attack from Apokolips in the form of the power vampire Mantis, who Darkseid hopes will generate enough fear to bring out the Anti-Life Equation (and thus introducing the very creepy DeSaad), forces the kids to bring in the Infinity Man to defeat Mantis.

It’s a good story, although once the Infinity Man stuff starts it’s like a whole different thing, and you want to see more of the Forever People and their story, so I guess it’s not surprising that Kirby wrote him out after a few issues.

Colletta inks the 22-page story and the cover, which has a photo collage background.

Published 1971

This issue concludes the brief 3-issue run CHALLENGERS had as a reprint book in 1973 with the story from SHOWCASE #11 (1957), though re-coloured to feature the groups later red and yellow jumpsuits instead of the classic purple. The aliens were also changed from orange to green.

In this story the Challs are sent down to find some missing scientists in Antarctica. While there they find the scientists in the clutches of an alien invasion force, the Tyrans, who plan some major explosions to reduce the gravity of the planet more to their liking, as well as destroy human civilization making us ripe for conquest. Some great artwork in the underground alien lair, and later on there’s a great huge alien machine which comes out of the ocean.

Bruno Premiani, best known as the co-creator of the Doom Patrol and his long stint on Tomahawk, inks the 24-page story. This might be his only time inking Kirby, unless he did some while working for S&K at Crestwood (the Kirby Checklist lists him on SHOWCASE #12 as well, but it looks quite different and I think DC’s recent George Klein credit seems more likely). I really like his work on this, reminding me a lot of the texture that Wallace Wood brought to later stories but not nearly as overwhelming. This might be my favourite inking in a Challengers story, which had a lot of good inking. It’s also interesting that this seems to be Premiani’s only DC credit in a several year period when he apparently wasn’t even living in the United States. Was this done well before it was published? Or was it just a job Premiani picked up while visiting from Argentina?

Published 1973

This story is available in CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN ARCHIVES v1.

Hm, the Inhumans and the Black Widow “In one mag together – Because You Demanded It”? I wonder how many letters they got actually demanding a split-book with those characters?

Anyway, after years of saying it was coming, the Inhumans finally got their own feature, written and drawn by Kirby, just before he left the company. In this issue, after a brief intro with the FF reviewing some film of the Inhumans, we see the royal family repel an attempt by some soldiers trying to find the Great Refuge, and then seeing their home attacked by a pair of missiles, sent by the exiled Maximus but designed to look like it came from the FF, sending those oh-so-paranoid Inhumans on the attack.

Not a bad start, although this brief run did get a bit weaker through the run, as I’m sure Kirby was ready to work on the next thing by this time.

Chic Stone inks the 10-page story, which is a bit better than his work on the later two issues of this four issue run, but still not close to his early 1960s run inking Kirby. The cover is split for the two features, with Kirby just doing the Inhumans half, inked by Frank Giacoia.

Published 1970

DAREDEVIL #43, 1968, inked by Joe Sinnott. I guess the Captain America guest appearance was the impetus for bringing Kirby back on DD covers for one issue several years in. Whatever the reason, that’s a great action pose for the two characters. You can see why Kirby was so often employed to do covers for books he didn’t draw interiors for.

Regular DD artist of the time Gene Colan did an unused cover to this issue, with DD more prominent than Cap (and giving Cap a whupping). You can see a version of it here. So presumably the Kirby version was commissioned either to give Cap a larger place or not having him as the underdog.

SPIDEY SUPER STORIES #20, 1976, inked by John Romita. Kirby got tapped for two issues of this surprisingly long running book that spun off from the Electric Company TV show’s Spidey segments. Both featured FF related characters (the other had the Surfer and Doom). Romita’s inks, as usual, pull the work a bit heavier towards his own style, as does the likely Bullpen-generated layout, but still a pretty attractive cover.

GHOST RIDER #22 – February 1977, inked by Al Milgrom. Another one of those odd choices of cover assignments for Kirby, he did three covers for GHOST RIDER in around this time. Looking at the series as a whole it looks like the intent was to give the book more of a super-hero flavour, playing down the super-natural stuff from earlier, so I guess having Kirby on the covers was a part of that.