Writer – Jack Kirby
Artist – Jack Kirby
Inker – Mike Royer
Colours – Petra Goldberg
Letters – Mike Royer

This issue sees X-51, the eponymous Machine Man trying to figure out the source of the interstellar communications being received and transmitted from the mental patient at Doctor Spalding’s hospital.  In doing so, Dr. Spalding and X-51 listen to a distress call from a ship that is being pulled into a giant sun and they realize that they must help whoever it is before they and their ship get destroyed.  Building a device out of his own body parts once again, X-51 brings the creature to Earth and finds that it is a machine man much like himself named Ten-For.  The problem that Machine Man now faces is that Ten-For is here and he just happens to be a holocaust specialist, something that does not bode well for the Earth or those that live upon it. This was yet another great issue by Jack Kirby in terms of both writing and artwork with a perfect example being the two-page spread on the second and third pages of the book which is truly awesome in the science-fiction wonder that it displays.  Kirby flexes his artistic muscles more so on this issue than he did on the previous two and it is great to see as this book really needed to get a little more crazy so to speak given what Kirby has done in the past.  The rest of the book is just as good, much improving upon the second issue of the series.  X-51 also gained a new villain, one with an incredibly terrible name, but one with a skillset that is so highly imaginative it is quite amazing that no other writers have appropriated it for their own.  Brilliant stuff!

4.5 out of 5