Kobra #6, Jan-Feb 1977. "The Crack In The World Conspiracy" Written by Martin Pasko, drawn by Mike Nasser, inked by Joe Rubenstein, colored by Liz Berube, lettered by Ben Oda, edited by ?? (no credit anywhere in the book), cover by Nasser and Rubenstein.

On the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, Johnny Double tries to get close to Kobra, who fires a wrist-blaster at him. Double evades the blaster long enough to get in a few blows against Kobra, sending the villain reeling. Then, Double grabs Kobra's wrist and demands that he shut off his quake-device. Kobra sends the controller (built into the wrist-blaster) flying, and, keeping hold of Double, sends the both of them over the side!

Kobra, however, has a serpents-tongue line to keep him from hitting the water, and Double barely manages to grab hold of Kobra's leg before he can plummet to his death! Kobra starts kicking Double's head, making Double remember when this started on the bridge (remember last issue?). Double awoke tied to the bridge, and while Kobra raved about the solar panel which would trigger the quake-device, destroying San Francisco, Double used the broken crystal on his watch to cut himself loose. Climbing down , he tackled Kobra before the villain could escape in his anti-grav beam coming from the ark. Then, the sun began to rise, activating the solar panel and triggering the quake device!

Back in the present, Double somehow grabs hold of the line and climbs up and over Kobra, who is taken by the anti-grav beam. Double then climbs back onto the bridge, where he finds the wrist-blaster Kobra tossed aside, which comes in handy to destroy the quake-maker!

Hours ago (this issue doesn't read chronologically, in case you hadn't guessed), in a plane plummeting down into Oregon, Jason Burr, Kobra's brother, tries to get the other passengers on the plane to react to the peril, when they suddenly vanish! Kobra teleports in and tells Burr to prepare himself for an ordeal. Burr tries to counter by pulling a sharp plastic scalpel from a picket, and threatens to cut his throat (presumably killing Kobra, too), but Kobra counter-counters by tossing an envelope to Burr containing a lock of Melissa's hair (Melissa is Jason's girlfriend, whom Kobra also knew years ago... she's been missing). Kobra tells Burr he won't be making it to San Francisco in time to help Double out. Kobra then vanishes.

Okay, now here's where it gets strange... later, on Kobra's ark, Kobra is informed that the hologram of himself was successfully projected into Burr's plane (huh? If it was a hologram, how did it carry the envelope? And how did it react as Kobra would have without Kobra being in control of it?). Kobra is satisfied with the report, but is dissatisfied with the failure of his men to beam him off the bridge when Double got loose. Kobra orders the man who was in charge of the anti-grav beam killed.

That evening, Double returned to his office with Randu Singh. They are just about to call "The Professor" when the man himself arrives. The Professor is Ross Emerson, an expert on solid-state electronics, who, after being shown the wrist-blaster, decides it's a highly-sophisticated laser (now you know why he's called the Profesor). Double then tells the entire story of how he got the blaster.

Later, Singh uses "The Eye of Kharma" in an attempt to determine what other functions the blaster has while the Professor analyzes the technology iteself. After learning what they can, Double decides he and Singh need to go back to Kobra's computer complex and see what else they can learn, and he's bringing the blaster with him... along with a tricked-up communicator like the ones Kobra's men carry. When they get there, they start activating all the computers, but Kobra's face comes on a monitor to gloat as gas is released in the room! Double uses the wrist-blaster to kill one of Kobra's men in order for them to escape the gas, and destroys the computer room as well!

Meanwhile, Jason Burr's plane lands safely in Oregon.

Back at Double and Singh, we find they'd been able to grab some computer tape, which later tells them Kobra's installing a monitor device on the undersea phone cables in the Pacific in order to "bug" computers, as well as the entire world! Randu and Johnny take a small motorboat out into the Pacific to track down Kobra's ark, which they are able to decloak with the wrist-blaster, and the two fight their way onto the ship. Kobra arrives to defend his ark, and blinds Randu with venom-gas. Double is about to kill Kobra with the wrist-blaster when the ark suddenly tilts, sending Johhny and Randu into the water, where Double continues to fire the blaster at the ark until, high in the sky, the ark explodes.

Double figures Kobra couldn't surfive that, but Randu tells him that by killing Kobra, he's also killed Jason Burr! Later, on board a Coast Guard cutter, we learn the commanding officer of the cutter is one of Kobra's men!

Ads of the issue: Oooh, scary stuff! Remember when DC published the titles to the right? Way before the Vertigo Line was ever considered, and Swamp Thing's own series had just been cancelled?

Nah, me neither... I don't recall ever buying those titles at all, except for DC Super-Stars of course... but someone must've bought them, 'cause DC published the suckers for years and years, using them as a way to develop new talent!

Of course, if Halloween was soon, you knew Christmas had to be coming shortly after that, and for several years, DC published tabloid-sized Rudolph collections... which they don't anymore...

Does anyone else out there agree with me that DC should collect all their old Rudolph stories into a trade paperback aimed at the children's book departments, just in time for the holidays?

This would be the perfect gift for comics fans to buy their young nieces and nephews they want to get interested in comics, as well as fans who have kids of their own. Heck, I'd buy three or four of them for gifts!

And below that ad, attention Star Trek fans, or Trekkies, or Trekkers, or whatever the heck you're calling yourselves... remember this thing? I bought the first issue of it when it came out, but I'll be damned if I can remember what happened to it.

For those of you who don't remember this, a Poster Magazine was a large poster that was folded down to magazine size, with magazine articles being printed on the "back," so you could read the articles, and then put the poster up on the wall of your room!

Note the red print, "The following data is classified material, available only to authorized personnel and friends of the Federation." Did anyone possibly take it seriously who was out of grade school?

Anyway, if you've got any of this stuff, blah blah blah blah (you kno the drill by now, right?)...

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