Showcase #90 (On Sale: March 10, 1970) has a Jason's Quest cover by Mike Sekowsky and Dick Giordano.

This issue begins with Jason's Quest in "The Circle of Death" written and penciled by Mike Sekowsky and inked by Jack Abel. Continuing from last issue, Tuborg has put the word out on the streets of Paris to find Jason and his sister and they do. Jason has bought a new guitar and is picking up a little extra cash playing in a club in town when in walks Jason's sister. Jason is shocked that she knows his name and then finds out that she was GG, the girl from the ferry, as she looks so different without her wig and makeup on.

As Jason tries to tell her he is her brother, the guy GG came to the club with attacks Jason for making a move on his girl at about the same time that Tuborg's men move in for the kill. Jason grabs GG and they head out the back and into the streets. Eventually they meet artist Andy and with his help get away from Tuborg's men. Just as Jason is about to tell GG they ware brother and sister more of Tuborg's men show up and they head off once again, once again meeting Andy who takes them to his second studio where a group of "friends" are making signs for a big protest tomorrow.

The next morning Jason and GG join the protest and Jason decides the safest place for them to be is in jail, so he smacks a French cop with a protest sign and he and GG are arrested. But Andy and his friends hijack the police van they are being carried in and "rescue" Jason and GG. Though they get away from the police, Tuborg's men are still on their trail.

Eventually Jason and GG make it to a warehouse and a room full of mannequins. Putting GG's clothes on one of the mannequins and strapping it to the back of his bike, Jason lures Tuborg's men away from GG and tells her to meet him tomorrow at noon under the Eiffel Tower. But GG has other ideas, "If I ever see that crazy man again--I'll take off in the opposite direction as fast as I can go! What a kook! And those friends of his--they're worse than he is! goodbye -- and good riddance!"

I really liked Jason's Quest and was sorry that this was the last issue. My good friend Tony Isabella also liked the strip as there is a long letter from on on the letter page.

Next is a on-page ad from Manhunter 2070 in the next issue of Showcase and that is followed by "Incident on Krobar 3" a two-page Manhunter 2070 story by Mike Sekowsky and Dick Giordano.

Edited by Mike Sekowsky.

Showcase #89

Showcase #89 (On Sale: January 27, 1970) has a nice Jason's Quest cover by Mike Sekowsky and Dick Giordano.

Jason's Quest continues this issue with "The Deadly Chase" written and penciled by Mike Sekowsky and inked by, well, I'm not sure. The GCD says this is Jack Abel, but I don't really see it. Abel has a certain smoothness to his inking, particularly around the eyes, noses and hands of characters, that I just don't see in this inking. He is also credited with inking the next issue, and I sort of see some Abel-like inking in that book. If anyone can point me to particular panels that display Abel's technique I would feel much better about this attribution.

As we left Jason last issue, he had just saved his sister's life, not knowing it was her and is now ahead of her on the road to Paris thinking she must be just ahead of him. Meanwhile, Tuborg sends two more assassins after Jason and his sister. Jason on the other hand sees a blond woman on the side of the road with a flat tire and thinks it is his sister, but when he hears her deep southern accent he knows he is mistaken.

She is "Billie Jo Brock of the Lo'siana Brocks" and is immediately smitten with Jason, but her advances are interrupted by gunshots from the two assassins, who also mistake Billie Jo for Jason's sister. They blow the "petrol tank" of Billie Jo's car and she and Jason high-tail it on his bike, the killers in hot pursuit and Billie Jo firing back at them with her own gun. As they are being chased, Jason sees the car of the woman he saved last issue and seeing her without her wig realizes that she is his sister. He lures the gunmen away from her and loses them in some woods.

There his bike runs out of gas and he and Billie Jo take off on foot finding a large empty house in the woods in which to hide. Later the gunmen find the house as well and while Billie Jo passes the time away in a lip-lock with Jason, he feels a gun against the back of his head. But it is not the gunmen, but rather the owner of the house, who had shut it down but remembered something she left and found the broken window where Jason and Billie Jo had entered and now found them. But it seems she is a widow, from Lo'siana as well and actually loosely related to Billie Jo. She provides them some gas for the bike and some cover fire from the assassins while they make their escape.

They gas up Jason's bike and Billie Jo shoots the tires on the assassin's car. They figure out what the four shots must mean and steal a car from the woman's garage and the chase continues. Jason loses them under a bridge and later in a bike race. Later Jason and Billie Jo barely escape from going off the end of an unfinished bridge, but the assassins are not so lucky. They crash off the bridge and die in a horrible explosion. Jason and Billie Jo make it to Paris where Jason tells Billie Jo the entirety of his story and says he must find his sister before Tuborg's men do. Billie Jo says she understands, "Find her, quick-- then come back 'cause Billie Jo has chosen you for herself!'

We then have one of those great Sekowshy full-page previes of the next issue inked by Dick Giordano.

Edited by Mike Sekowsky.

Showcase #88

Showcase #88 (On Sale: December 11, 1969) has a Jason's Quest cover by Mike Sekowsky and Dick Giordano.

We begin with "The Beginning" of Jason's Quest, written and drawn by Mike Sekowsky and inked by Frank Giacoia. Every resource I can find says this story was inked by Dick Giordano, but I am looking at the pages and it just ain't so, no way, no how.

Before we get to the recap of this book, I must say a few words about Mike Sekowsky at this point in his career. Mike had been in comics since 1941 when he started at Timely and had drawn just about every genre there was: super-hero, western, war, funny animal, romance, TV , jungle action and science-fiction, and though he was known as a super-hero artist, he obviously was more attracted to action stories with more humanistic characters.

While everyone else at DC was chasing Marvel super-heroes or attempting to relive their time at EC, Mike Sekowsky was following a different path. He made the Metal Men look human and turned them into thriller characters on the run. He participated big-time in the biggest deflowering of super-powers in comic history by separating Wonder Woman from her powers and costume. He took chances on new types of books and I for one appreciated the effort. I may be the only one, but I particularly appreciated Jason's Quest.

We begin at "The Beginning" as Jason Davis' father has been mortally wounded in a shooting. Summoned by the doctors to his deathbed, the blonde young man listens to a stunning series of revelations. His real name is Jason Grant, Jr. and when he was just a child his real father had been murdered by a mobster named Tuborg, who sought the elder Grant's latest invention. As Tuborg's killers combed the house for witnesses, Grant's servant, Davis, rushed to the nursery, commanding the nanny to take Jason's twin sister, someone Jason never knew existed, into hiding while he did the same with young Jason. The nanny headed for London while Davis brought Jason to America. Over the next nineteen years, Davis moved himself and Jason constantly, always trying to stay one step ahead of Tuborg's searching thugs.

In preparation for the day Jason would take over the fight, Davis drilled commando training into the boy's head. With his final breath, he gasped, "Your sister ... somehow your father secreted on her person evidence that will end Tuborg and his evil empire. In the fireplace at home ... the box your father gave me -- it has your papers ... money ... and -- and ... I'm ... I'm ... sor --"

In five and a half short pages, including one splash, Sekowsky has neatly set up the entire series and there is not a spandex outfit or alien super-power in sight.

Unknown to Jason, Tuborg had planted a bug in the hospital room and heard every word. Finding Jason's sister was now their number one priority. Jason flies to London, buys a motorcycle and begins his search for his sister. From an ex-neighbor he gets a picture of her and a direction; she is heading for the continent.

Tuborg's men ambush Jason on the road and though they don't get the picture, they get enough clues to track her to a ferry soon to go across the channel. On the ferry Jason saves a woman named Gee Gee from two thugs. Gee Gee asks if Jason would like to travel with her, but he declines, wanting instead to head out looking for his sister. As he drives away Gee Gee removes her black wig and is revealed as Jason's sister.

The three-page back-up "Ghost Rider" is written and drawn by Mike Sekowsky and really is inked by Dick Giordano. It is the tale of teenagers, bikers and ghostly riders.

Edited by Mike Sekowsky.