The saga continues!
First up are Jimmy Olsen #138 and 139. The first issue concludes the saga (for the time being) of The Project as the D.N.Alien continues his attack and is joined by his brethern fresh from the Evil Factory thanks to Mokkari and Simyan. The Project is mobilized and both Newsboys young and old join the fray. Ultimately a reactor goes critical and Superman tears it up from the floor and uses it as bait to trick the monsters to follow it down a deep well used for geo-thermal exploration. The explosion that would've destroyed not only The Project but Metropolis is contained. Then its off to Metropolis in the next issue, as Superman, the Guardian, and Jimmy leave the Project and return to file the report. The Newsboys are stranded behind but quickly find a way out of the Project on their own. Morgan Edge, agent of Darkseid and owner of Galaxy Broadcasting, takes center stage after he returns from his evacuation due to the impending explosion, and he finds himself confronted by "Goody" Rickels, a zany look-alike for Don Rickles. Edge ships Jimmy, Clark Kent, and Goody off to investigate a dimensional trap that only gets Clark, but soon enough Jimmy, Goody, and the Guardian are waylaid by Ugly Mannheim of Inter-Gang and the story ends with the trio filled with explosives that will go off in 24 hours.
In Forever People #3 we get a real understanding of the Anti-Life Equation when Glorious Godrey unleashes his Justifiers, cultists convinced everything even life is secondary to the commands of the leadership. A Justifier threatens Donnie, the boy the FP have befriended and they save him, but not before the Justifier blows himself up in his martyred cause. The FP leave their base and go confront Godfrey after invoking Infinity Man. But Darksied shows up and his first direct action reveals his power as he pretty much sends Infinity Man packing bringing the FP back unconscious, and quickly they are turned over to Desaad.
New Gods #3 introduces the Black Racer chasing down Lightray but who is sent to Earth via Boom Tube supplied by Metron thus saving Lightray for the nonce. The storythen shows how this "New God of Death" is bonded with paralyzed Vietnam vet Willy Walker. Another Inter-Gang threat rears up and Orion and his human associates band to confront it, another bombing attack it seems. It's pretty convoluted but working independently of one another both Orion and the Black Racer/Willie Walker stop the threat sending the bomb hurtling into the sky aboard the truck it was hidden on.
Mister Miracle #3 offers up Doctor Bedlam, a mindforce who occupies "animates" and who sets a very interesting trap for our Super Escape Artist. He gets Scott into a high-rise building, then forces him to reach the outside by going through the thousands of humans who are in the building. That would be simple enough, but Bedlam drops the "Paranoid Pill" and everyone in the building save for Miracle is transformed into a raging lunatic filled with fear and homocidal intent. Miracle gets down a few floors, but is trapped in a case and we leave him at story's end hurtling forty-five floors to the bottom of the building.
The saga has by this time established itself. The books have distinctive characteristics and tones. But a common thread in these was the threat of a bomb. There's a runaway reactor in Jimmy Olsen, a truck bomb in New Gods, and self-exploding fanatics in Forever People. Steve Englehart gets a lot of credit for creating the "human bomb" in an issue of the Avengers, but it seems to me that Kirby gets there sooner with his Justifiers, people willing to sacrifice themselves for a cause and without regard to anyone's life even their own. The sense that Darkseid is seeking the Anti-Life Equation by promoting a campaign of terror is clearer to me on this reading than it's ever been. The idea that individualism is surrendered to the state is also clearly established as part of what Anti-Life is. Sad to say, these stories have a clear and significant relevance to the news of our own modern day.
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