Machine Man #5

The cover to this August 1978 issue sets a genuinely striking cosmic stage: Machine Man — billed here as "The Living Robot" — stands defiantly arms-crossed in the foreground while an enormous, grimacing blue alien menace looms behind him, dwarfing even the planet Earth cradled nearby. The cover blurb promises a story of galactic invaders closing in and Machine Man turning his back on Earth in "Day of the Non-Hero," a tension-packed premise rendered in Jack Kirby's bold, energetic pencils with inks by Joe Rubinstein. It's a fine showcase of Kirby's late-'70s Marvel work, full of that cosmic grandeur he did so well.