Star Brand faces his greatest challenge - in Russia!
Ken listens to the news, which focuses on the increasing danger of nuclear war, especially given evidence of some nuclear explosions in the Soviet Union. Ken normally doesn't pay attention to politics and isn't sure what his responsibility is here.
He visits Duck, who is healing after he accidentally hurt her, pushing her out of the way of a car. Ken feels terrible about the accidental damage he can do.
Myron calls and points out that the news about nuclear war is growing more tense. He asks Ken to do something about it, and he agrees.
Ken flies to the Soviet Union. He wonders what happened with these explosions--was it the Old Man? He sees a mushroom cloud from a standard nuke and explores the area. He finds footprints sunk deep into the ground and follows them.
He finds a superhuman who calls himself Gladiator. After the White Event, he started getting denser and denser. Now he is incredibly strong and durable. He plans to use his power to destroy the Soviet government. They have tried to stop him with nukes, to no avail.
Ken feels like he can't let Gladiator kill all these Soviet soldiers, or let him accidentally start a nuclear war. They fight, and Ken tries to destroy him with a star blast, but it doesn't hurt Gladiator.
Ken decides that the only thing he can do is fly him into the sun. He grabs him and takes him to the sun, but finds he can't bring himself to kill. Instead he throws Gladiator into empty space, where he'll continue to go on forever. Instead of killing him, Ken has sentenced Gladiator to a fate worse than death.
— Description from Comic Vine community (comicvine.gamespot.com).
