Latest "Continuation Project" commission - All-Star Squadron #155, drawn by long-time contributor Stephen Baskerville, and based as always on the cover of a comic written, plotted or scripted by Roy Thomas, in this case the Neal Adams/Tom Palmer cover to X-Men #63.
Title: "A Time Of Changes..."
[NOTE: Krysalis, who appears in this issue, was a character who Roy Thomas intended to introduce in the pages of All-Star Squadron had the series continued after Crisis On Infinite Earths, and who would have been one of the winged Venusian women seen occasionally in Golden Age Wonder Woman stories, and in All-Star Squadron #57 (retelling a chapter of All-Star Comics #13). I've featured her on the cover of issue #70 - as designed by Chris Ivy - and in (but not on the cover of) issues #98-100.]
Story: Taking a break from his work at the DA's office, Air Wave skates along the telephone wires above the city, when he spots crooks breaking into - of all thing - a pet shop! Descending to the ground, he engages the thieves in a short battle, but one of them gets a lucky blow in with the butt of his gun, and knocks the hero out. When he recovers, he finds himself tied up in the back of a speeding truck - but luckily the attack hadn't damaged his radio equipment, and he's able to send out a call for help to any members of the All-Star Squadron who might receive his message ...
... an SOS which is picked up by the Star-Spangled Kid and Stripesy, in the Star-Rocket Racer, who home in on the source of the signal and start to track their comrade. As they speed along, they fly over Wildcat, riding his Cat-o-Cycle, and alert him to Air Wave's plight - and the Fighting Feline speeds after them.
Air Wave's signal comes to a halt, and the three heroes quietly approach an abandoned lumber mill in the woods. Peering through a hole in the wall, they see Air Wave held hostage - and their one-time ally Krysalis being encased in a strange machine, under the control of Hourman's old foe Doctor Togg! Togg explains to the captive Air Wave that - after Krysalis had left the All-Star Squadron some months earlier to explore the new world in which she found herself - he had encountered her and, given his fascination with human/animal hybrids (the so-called Gombezis), had captured her to understand her alien origins. Having built the machine he now imprisons her in, he intends to extract her genetic codes and meld them with some of the animals stolen from the pet store, to create a new species of servant creatures which will serve him in his criminal activities!
Wildcat, Stripesy and the Star-Spangled Kid have heard enough, and burst into the mill! As the two adult heroes tangle with Togg's criminal thugs, the Kid frees Air Wave, and the four charge toward the villain - but he throws a switch, activating his machine and sending a wave of mysterious rays though the captured Krysalis!
Togg's expertise has failed him, though, and the machine also sends out bursts of radiation, which strike the heroes and start to paralyse them - and Togg believes that Krysalis' genetics will also alter those of her All-Star Squadron comrades! However, the fighting spirit of Ted Grant allows him to struggle to his feet, pull back his fist, and lay Togg out with a single punch - and Stripesy, drawing on his mechanical knowledge, manages to disable the machine while Air Wave and the Star-Spangled Kid take Togg's associates into custody.
Later, at the JSA's headquarters, Dr Mid-Nite concludes that Krysalis' health is fading fast - but that Togg's machine is not responsible. Rather, her time on Earth had exposed her to diseases which her alien anatomy has no defences against, and all that can save her is to return to the other-dimensional Venus from which she came. Gathering the young heroine up in his arms, the Spectre breaches the barrier between worlds and carries her back to the world of her birth - while her comrades remember her brief time fighting alongside them.
