UTHEORY OF : Our Fighting Forces # 158

Here's one from Jack Kirby's later days at DC. Our Fighting Forces 158, cover-date August 1975. By this point, Kirby's Fourth World titles had all been canceled, as well as his Demon comic. He was still doing Kamandi and launching Omac and Sandman when he dove into a 12-issue run on the Losers in this title. Great stuff in a Boy Commandos/Sgt. Fury vein, written and drawn by Kirby and inked by Mike Royer. Cover also by Kirby & Royer.

And even in 1975, only Kirby could get away with having an overweight female villain named Panama Fattie. Wow.

Kirby's DC days would last until early 1976. He'd return to Marvel shortly after...

UTHEORY OF : Ghosts # 49

Picked up a few more issues of Ghosts to help complete my Cigar Band (mid-70s) run of DC comics. Issues 43, 46 and 47 were nothing special, but 49 - cover-date October 1976 - was pretty good.

Cover by Ernie Chan isn't one of his best but depicts the main story, a well-done tale by Carl Wessler with art by veteran Lee Elias. Can't go wrong with "I heard something in the basement" as the premise of most any horror story. Wessler wrote the other two stories here as well - a reunited love tale that featured the only mainstream pro work of artist Pit Capili and a haunted treasure number with solid art by Fred Carrillo.

Wessler by this point could knock out these stories while standing on his head and maybe sometimes did. The quality varies on how much detail he put in and how much effort the usual crowd of DC's horror artist of the era put into them.

They must have been doing something right. Ghosts survived the DC Implosion and soldiered on until 1982, running for an impressive 112 issues...