Kirby’s only cover for the short lived super-team, it’s always nice to see another one of those overhead cityscapes by Kirby, as well as a nice drawing of Hercules, plus a very 1970s villain. Inked by Frank Giacoia.

Published 1976

In “The Fall of Asgard”, Thor is on Earth, tending to business like rounding up hijackers, while the Warriors Three and Balder are leaving the realm of the Norn Queen. Odin picks this time to go into the Odinsleep that he needs to retain his Odinpowers for another Odincycle, leaving the Odinrealm open for attack by the evil Odinson Loki, who gathers various Odinfoes like the storm giants.

The page after this, a full page of the giants on the rampage, is gorgeous, by the way. Check it out if you have this issue.

Sif is able to contact Thor on Earth and get him to return to Asgard, and he and the various defenders of the realm battle the invaders, but not before Loki is able to get the Ring Imperial from the Allfather and take Sif prisoner, making him Thor and the other bow before him.

Bill Everett inks the 20-page story, the last of his brief run (with some possible assistance from John Verpoorten, see comments). It’s kind of uneven compared to his others, although still better than most Thor inking. Some pages are great, but a few others seems stiff, maybe a bit rushed.

The cover is by Marie Severin, replacing the one Kirby did. The likely reason for the replacement is the the Kirby version (shown in TJKC #18) has Thor bowing before Loki, defeated, while the published version has him still defiant, so I guess someone decided the hero should look more heroic on the cover. Both versions do seem to use the same background of Asgard, though, and Severin does do a good Kirby (in fact, the original art boards to both versions shown in TJKC are signed by Kirby).

Published 1970

A year after the previous series, Kirby returns to the toy line inspired SUPER POWERS, which I think by this time was also part of the Super Friends cartoon, which I guess explains the Hall of Justice super-hero HQ in this issue. Anyway, Kirby doesn’t write this series, just pencils. We open just after the events of “The Hunger Dogs”, with Darkseid’s rule overturned.

He’s able to find some of his most loyal servants, DeSaad, Kalibak and Steppenwolf (actually just “animated bodies” of them that he brought back to life) and escape to the moon, where they plan the conquest of Earth, which is where our various action figures, um, I mean, heroes, come in, splitting into teams to investigate five mysterious seeds which have appeared through the world, which seem to be digging to the Earth’s core. J’onn J’onzz goes to England where he meets up with Aquaman to investigate one of the seeds. While there, they encounter DeSaad, and all of them are hurled back in time where they meet King Arthur.

Kind of a dull story, although the art does have a few points of interest, mostly a few of the scenes with Darkseid in the first half.

Greg Theakston inks the cover and 23-page story.

Published 1985