Reprints of 1966 issues of THOR continue with “The Verdict of Zeus” from #129. It’s pretty impressive how much story they were putting in just 16 pages each issue back then. This issue has Thor returning to New York, with a very funny sequence where he’s talking to a crowd on the street and then taking a cab to Jane Foster’s place.

We then turn our attention to Olympus, in all its ornate glory, where Pluto announces to Zeus that Hercules has been tricked into taking over Pluto’s punishment in the underworld. Hercules also battles his way up to Olympus, only to be told that the contract is binding, and he must find someone willing to battle on his behalf.

Back to Thor, he speaks to Jane (and briefly meets her new room-mate, the mysterious and kind of freaky looking Tana Nile, setting up another future story) and tells her he’ll be renouncing his godly heritage for her love. Returning to Asgard, he finds out Odin has been looking for him.

Turns out it’s the time fated for Thor’s trial on the Day of Three Worlds, so he has to delay his discussion about Jane. Meanwhile, Hercules has no luck finding any willing to battle on his behalf, and is really to accept his fate rather than live in a world where valor means nothing. That’s when Thor, hearing Hercules’ plight during his trial, arrives and announces he’ll fight for Hercules.

As I mentioned about the previous issue, I’m a big fan of this storyline, all the more amazing when you consider that this was originally published on the same month as FF #51. Talk about firing on all cylinders. Just the various drawings of Asgard and Olympus in all their majesty are worth it.

Tales of Asgard continues running a year behind with “The Sword in the Scabbard” from JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY #117 (1965). This begins the major saga for the feature which would run for the next dozen episodes. It seems that the immortals of Asgard have been a bit bored, and when Asgardians get bored, they fight. This displeases Odin, who goes to find Thor and Loki. He orders the fighting to cease and takes his sons to see the Oversword (aka the Odinsword, a massive sword which will cause the end of the universe if it’s unsheathed) and shows them that it’s developed a massive crack. He tells them they’ll have to lead an expedition to discover who was responsible it. A great start to a fun story that introduces some nice Asgardian background characters and concepts.

Vince Colletta inks throughout, including the cover from #128.

Published 1973

Another of Marvel’s cover-to-cover reprints of key issues from the early 1990s, this one marking the first appearance of Doctor Doom from 1962 in the 23 page “Prisoners of Doctor Doom” story. It’s also the first FF issue inked by Joe Sinnott, later the inker most associated with FF through the second half of Kirby’s run and the decade after that.

Following a brief prelude with Doctor Doom departs from his lair to capture the FF, we switch to the as-yet-unnamed Baxter Building where Johnny is reading that new Hulk comic, comparing Ben to the Hulk. Welcome to the Marvel age of subtle cross-promotion. This leads to a fight of course (I’m sure Johnny regrets burning that copy of HULK #1 now), and even Reed’s starting to notice how they’re always fighting among themselves when they don’t have a super-powered menace to face. This is sharply cut off when Doom attacks. Reed gives the quick version of Doom’s origin, a great little sequence that left a lot of room for later stories to flesh out.

Using Sue as a hostage, Doom sends the rest of the FF back in time to retrieve Blackbeard’s treasure chest. The boys go back, get period disguises and soon find themselves drugged and taken prisoner aboard a ship. Ben wakes up and attacks first, with a great scene of him coming up through the floor.

The adventure continues with a battle with another pirate ship, after which we find out that Ben is in fact the Blackbeard of legend. Reed realizes that there must be something more to the treasure than Doom has let on, so he replaces it with chains, and Ben briefly turns on his team-mates, planning to stay in the past where he can be accepted as a giant orange pirate. A sudden tornado then appears, knocking out the ship, and when the trio wash ashore Ben realizes the error of his thinking, and Doom’s time machine appears to take them back. Back in the present, they battle Doom and are saved by Sue, with Doom finally escaping in the end.

This is a great issue, I think my favourite of the first ten issues of FF. A very dense story, with a lot of interesting concepts and clever twists, plus showing the tightening continuity (with some references to the Sub-Mariner from the previous issue) which would soon definitely set Marvel apart. Plus of course Sinnott’s inks are great. Kirby’s penciling at this stage is obviously quite different from the work Sinnott would be inking a few years later, but Sinnott brings it out well.

The only notable ad this issue is the full-page house ad for INCREDIBLE HULK #1. The letter column includes a note from Roy Thomas praising the use of continuity up to #3 (I’m sure Namor showing up in #4 just blew his mind) and signing up for a two-year subscription.

Published 1992

Kirby was brought in to give a new direction to the reportedly under-performing SILVER SURFER book with this issue, inked by Herb Trimpe, who was apparently supposed to take over the art with the next issue. Said next issue doesn’t exist, of course, and the issue ends on a cliffhanger that I believe isn’t even acknowledged in the next Surfer story.

The Surfer’s wanderings take him to the region of the Inhumans’ Great Refuge. He’s first attacked by some of the renegade Inhumans who are under the command of Maximus. He’s able to drive them off, but that’s enough to make the Surfer paranoid when he comes across the Great Refuge and winds up in battle against the Inhuman royal family (the Inhumans don’t help the situation by attacking him first).

Said battle continues through an attack by Maximus, including an amusing episode where Lockjaw is able to use his mighty jaws to keep the Surfer’s board from him. The Surfer finally leaves, and renounce reason, love and peace and revel in the madness he’s always found himself greeted with on Earth. Verily, the sixties were over at that point.

This is a really mixed issue. In some ways I’m not sure Kirby was fully engaged in what he was asked to do, understandably since he was just about to leave the company, and couldn’t have been that happy about being asked to “fix” the Surfer two years after the character was launched in a solo book without him. So I’m not sure that the new direction was even viable. However, some of the artwork is really nice, in particular the splash page of the Surfer entering the Great Refuge. Trimpe’s inking is really fine in spots.

The Bullpen page for this issue announces that Kirby is leaving Marvel.

There doesn’t seem to be a consensus on the cover, as some sources credit Kirby and others don’t. I’d say the background Inhumans definitely don’t seem to be Kirby, but the Surfer and Black Bolt figures are clearly at least someone talented trying to do Kirby, maybe based on previous drawings (they’re pretty generic poses for the characters). Opinions?

Published 1970

Originally intended to be published by Genesis West, PHANTOM FORCE wound up with two issues published by Image. It’s a bit of a mess, with eight inkers working on the 23 pages of Kirby artwork (a cover, 20 pages of story and two pinups). Most of them, not surprisingly, don’t work out too well (although, to be fair, not nearly as bad as I imagined when it was announced these artists would be inking Kirby), although Jerry Ordway does some good work on his two pages, and Jim Lee is surprisingly good on his story page and pinup.

As for the story, co-written by Kirby with Michael Thibodeaux and Richard French, it’s as much of a patch job, with the second half being taken from a 1970s proposal Kirby did for a Bruce Lee comic, modified to be a character with the kind of sad name Gin Seng, grafted onto a separate group concept, which looks like it was penciled some time in the 1980s. The first chapter has most of Phantom Force (Apocalypse, Probe and Bobby) trying and failing to break into a lab to steal a cylinder. In the second chapter we meet their leader, Sensei and Tadsuki, the person who sent them on their mission to get the cylinder, which contains an antidote to a government created plague.

Tadsuki then goes to try to enlist Gin Seng, a former student of Sensei, who refuses. In the final chapter (which has the pages Kirby did for the Bruce Lee proposal) Gin Seng is talking to some neighbourhood kids and is kidnapped, along with his girlfriend. He fights in captivity until finding out his girlfriend is being held elsewhere.

There’s some decent art down below the surface here, in particular the martial arts scenes, but there are also parts that seem more like someone doing a Kirby imitation. Hopefully if this stuff is ever reprinted we’ll see it closer to the original form.

There’s also an ad in here for an still-unpublished Genesis West book RUSH, featuring a cosmic snowboarder by Kirby inked by Marty Lasick.

The back of the book has several pages of the various collaborators on the book writing about Kirby.

Published 1993

This issue opens with the arrival of Celestial Arishem of the Fourth Host among the Incan ruins, sent to judge Earth in fifty years. Doctor Damian chooses to stay with Ajax and learn what he can, while Ikaris takes Margo out to the plane before the area is sealed off. Meanwhile, Kro is being punished for his failure to prevent the Celestial’s arrival by the Deviant leader Tode. He plans to use his devilish appearance to get the humans to do their work for them. He also attempts to attack Ikaris and Margo’s plane, until Ikaris uses his powers to quickly take them to New York, where he drops in on a fellow Eternal.

The beautiful Sersy (later changed to Sersi), who we find out is the inspiration for the Circe of Greek myth. He asks her to protect Margo while he deals with the impending Deviant attack. The issue closes with Kro, in full Devil mode, attacking, spreading fear, but we see some humans are also defiant as Ikaris flies in.

There’s some great stuff in this issue. In particular I like the page introducing Sersi and the two page spread of Arishem’s arrival. I also liked the bit at the end with the defiant human responding to Kro’s threats, as it reminds me of the classic Terrible Turpin sequence in NEW GODS, humanity defiant in the face of a war among gods brought into the city streets. ETERNALS definitely kicked into high-gear with this issue after a lot of set-up in the previous issues, still introducing lots of new concepts but starting to play with them.

John Verpoorten inks the cover and 17-page story, and I just want to say, though Verpoorten’s name doesn’t often come up among discussions of best Kirby inkers, he definitely deserves some consideration for stories like this. Very slick, very powerful, seems very faithful to the pencils.

Published 1976