As we reach the thirtieth issue of the weekly era, the second of the original serials finishes its run, while Marvel Comics legend John Severin brings the cover perhaps the most far removed from the events in the interior.

This appears to be one of only a few covers Severin ever did for the company, with the previous ones being for seventies issues of G.I. Combat and his later Wildstorm covers for the western series Desperadoes in the mid-aughts. At this point in his career, he was in his late sixties and working on what would be his final regular series, Marvel’s short-lived Marine comic Semper Fi. He would become something of an artist emeritis for the years after this, popping in now and then to work on a Marvel book that needed an old-school feel. He continued to work on a variety of odd projects until just a few years before his death in 2012 at the age of 90.

“Will” by James Owsley (Christopher Priest), M.D. Bright, and Romeo Tanghal

All pretenses between Green Lantern and Captain Atom are gone now and this issue is just an extended battle between the two heroes. Green Lantern mischaracterizes Captain Atom’s place in the DCU pretty hard, although it’s not that far removed from the story presented to the public in his title.

Captain Atom ends up surprised by Green Lantern’s power as he mentiones Batman took out Guy Gardner with one punch, which means he’s judging the Green Lantern power levels on hearsay as he wasn’t yet a team member during the “one punch” incident. Ultimately, GL’s ring runs low on charge and Captain Atom overcomes him. He flies off to find the alien only for it to take him down with one blast and declare its plan to remain on Earth.

This tale has stretched way too long and that isn’t even taking into account the problems I’ve mentioned before about running this alien story concurrently to Invasion! where Captain Atom gets a very different presentation.

“Knock ’em Dead part 7” by Sharon Wright, Randy DuBurke, and Pablo Marcos

The Deb story once again goes off the rails as Black Canary saves the killers from a group of attackers, but isn’t able to keep up with the Deb when she bolts. The mysterious shadow person who received the note contacts an unnamed gay man, neither of which have really been established in the story at all.

The story ends with the gay man, the Deb, and Black Canary all preparing for some kind of confrontation, even as we still have four more chapters of this serial, which really feels like it should have wrapped right here.

The Black Canary serials clearly needed editor Robert Greenberger to step in and control Wright’s excesses, but instead, she is allowed to run wild and create the most meandering, disjointed chapters to a story that likely would have been great if told in half the pages.