Ditko inks over Kirby on the cover of this issue (which also features a rather important Doctor Strange story not mentioned on the cover at all). A bit heavy on the inks, but I guess that’s fair enough considering he’s lending one of his villains from Spider-Man to the cause as well (returning the favour from Spidey facing Doctor Doom a few months earlier). I like the way the Torch began to look around this time, with the more clearly defined face when he’s flaming.

Two reprints from 1958 in this issue, both Kirby inked by Marvin Stein, although the newly added credits list Wallace Wood as the inker.

CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN #2 is the source for the 10-page “The Traitorous Challenger”. The Challs are investigating a strange creature spotting in Australia when “honorary member” June Walker arrives and tries to get them to abandon the mission. When they refuse, she attempts to sabotage their equipment, but Prof sees through her “accidents” and she reveals that a super-computer told her that a Challenger would die on this mission, based on all known information.

They continue to battle the creature, which is a very weird cubic beast with a dinosaur-like texture, two legs and a stalk with one “eye” that pulses with energy. Prof realizes that it must be getting energy from the sun in the day and a volcanic source during the night, so if they can draw it away from the volcanic source when night falls it’ll be defeated. Seems logical. It works, and they also decide that June’s actions prevented them from following their original plans, which would have resulted in a Challenger dying, making her a heroine. Seems a bit condescending, but she seems quite proud of that in the final panel.

Next up is the 12-page “The Secret of the Sorcerer’s Mirror” from CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN #3. Master thief Hillary Mycroft steals an ancient mirror which holds the secret locations of three objects which promise great power. The Challengers split up to pursue his men on the search, Prof on the undersea piece, Red on the mountaintop and the others to an island. Along the way each team is saved by a mysterious being, but manages to lose the piece, which explodes when Mycroft tries to put it together because Red removed part of his piece. Yeah, seemed like an odd ending to me, too. A lot of the half-issue CotU stories tend to be unsatisfying, with quick endings, though with a lot of interesting visuals along the way. The full-issue stories work better, but unfortunately full-issue stories were very much the exception at DC at the time (except for the CotU stories that were full issue, did DC do any other full-issue stories in the 1957-1959 era? The major “exciting three-part novel” era of Superman came a bit later, right?).

The last page of each story has a “Kirby is Coming” banner across the bottom, and the letter page in this issue goes into the source of these stories a bit, and plugs Kirby’s return to DC (in JIMMY OLSEN and other then-unnamed books). However, it also incorrectly credits Wood with the inks.

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.

Surprisingly, I really like Chic Stone’s inks on the Thing on this cover. I usually think his Thing inking is the weakest part of his FF inks from this era, but on this example (and a lot of the other covers) it seems to work better. Good cover overall, not the greatest villains ever, but the layout gives even them a nice sense of menace. I also really like the sense of depth Kirby gives the layouts.

Published 1965