Captain Marvel (vol 1) #45 VF

Last 25-cent cover price. Cover pencils by Al Milgrom and John Romita (Cap and Rick Jones faces), inks by Mike Esposito and John Romita (Cap and Rick Jones faces). "The Bi-Centennial!", script by Steve Englehart (plot; script) and Al Milgrom (plot), art by Al Milgrom; The Head of the Denebian underground convinces Mar-Vell that the solution to all their problems is for Rick Jones and Mar-Vell to enter the Soul Gem in his possession, a Gem that the Supreme Intelligence secretly manipulated the cyborgs into acquiring just as he sent the Null-Trons to invade, setting up the conflict to further his byzantine plan; Once inside the Gem, the two minds' struggle to keep from merging manifests as a direct battle between their mental avatars and the Gem in turn transmits the psychic echoes of their personal war onto the physical battlefield between the Null-Trons and the Denebian cyborgs; Rambu, the least mechanized of the cyborgs, remains underground with the Head by the Gem and questions the plan to use the aliens' conflict to fuel their own. A synopsis of Steve Englehart's intended plans for the following issue; Englehart left Marvel suddenly before that issue was published. Letter to the editor from comic writer Ralph Macchio. 36 pgs., full color. Cover price $0.25.