Jack Kirby and Dick Ayers provide the cover for this issue while Joe Sinnott was doing the interiors on the Thor stories. A good sinister Loki face, even floating out in nothing, is always a highlight of these JiM covers, and of course Sandu has one of those trademark outstretched hands.

One of the more oddball series to see a Kirby cover in the 1970s is this comic tied in to Spider-Man’s role on the ELECTRIC COMPANY tv show. Not a lot of Kirby left after the Romita inks on the Spider-Man figure, but that’s a great looking Doctor Doom (I’m not completely sold on the Romita credit for the Doom figure, which is much more faithful to Kirby’s linework than most of his inking over Kirby). The Surfer is pretty good, too, but more of an afterthought in this layout.

Not sure how the story is, but based on these panels with Doom and the Surfer from a later issue probably not good, but certainly bizarre.

Published 1976

That stairway going up into the background is just an accident waiting to happen, isn’t it? Some hand-rails would be nice, Mandarin. My favourite part of this cover is the noodling on the throne, though.

George Roussos inks this cover.

Published 1964

Rather odd effect from the webbing on this cover. I’m not sure it quite works, making it look more like a long tunnel than a web. Other than that very effective, with a good but slightly-wrong Kirby version of Spider-Man (with the mask a little off). I also really like Chic Stone’s inking on this one. Sometimes that excessively chunky outline style doesn’t quite work, but on this one it does make Spider-Man kind of pop out.

Published 1964

Another of Kirby’s many covers for INVADERS here. A couple of new retro-characters take centerstage on this cover, but Union Jack is a pretty good character for Kirby to be drawing. As usual for the era a bit heavy on copy on the cover (do we need both the villain and a blurb telling us that we hold a landmark book with the end of an Invader? Boy, I wonder if it’ll be Captain America?).

Inking is credited to Frank Giacoia in the Kirby Checklist, but I’m not sure about that one. Parts of Captain Britain Union Jack look like that might be right, but the background characters definitely don’t.

Published 1976

OMAC comes to a rather abrupt and unsatisfying ending in this issue, as Kirby went on to Marvel and DC decided not to continue the book. It does have its moments, though.

The story opens with OMAC having been reverted to Buddy Blank, with no memory of his activities since turning into OMAC, stranded on a rock in the middle of the ocean that Brother Eye has determined is the headquarters of the water-stealing Doctor Skuba. Before Brother Eye can transmit an OMAC “structure print” to convert him, Buddy sinks into the rock and emerges in Skuba’s lair. Buddy is shown around by Skuba’s daughter Seaweed and a young man named Apollo (with various hints given about their origins and how they relate to the monstrous creatures created by Skuba’s “atomic manipulation”. Skuba meanwhile is able to detect Brother Eye’s monitoring of his lair, and decides he needs to kill Buddy before he can be transformed.

Fortunately Brother Eye is able to intervene and continues to attack Skuba until Skuba is able to track down the location of Brother Eye and causes meteors to bombard Brother Eye, and then uses a heat beam to create a molten prison.

The last panel has a quick explosion of Scuba’s lair caused by overloading from the attack on Brother Eye to pass as an “ending”. The original version of the page has been seen in the Kirby Collector #40 and reveals that the next issue would have been titled “The Walking Dead”, but not much more.

So not a great ending, although it would be interesting to find out what exactly was going on with Seaweed and Apollo, plus if we ever find out what Buddy Blank feels about all of this. There is some really good art, such as the 2-page spread of the interior of Brother Eye and the OMAC “structure print”, the only place we actually see OMAC in this issue.

Mike Royer inks the 18-page story.

Published 1975