Justice League Annual #1 Sep ,1987 (VG)

'Germ Warfare'

In the South Pacific, several employees of Kord Industries arrive via helicopter to a compound that the company bought recently for an undisclosed purpose. They enter the structure and a silent, pale-skinned woman with red eyes follows behind them. They turn around and make eye contact and then immediately fly away in their helicopter.

The Justice League's monitoring equipment gets a message that in four locations, the local population are turning into zombies. They split into teams to tackle the problem: Black Canary flies with Booster Gold to Paris, Batman and Green Lantern Guy Gardner head to Tokyo, Doctor Fate and Martian Manhunter visit Sydney, and Blue Beetle's Blue Beetle's Bug is dispatched to Hollywood with Mister Miracle in tow.

Booster and Canary land at a hospital that is the center of the outbreak and find the staff and patients initially ignore them but spontaneously become violent. They are surrounded and forced into a patient's room where the two heroes end up sharing the same red eyes and vacant stares as the other infected persons.

Batman and Guy touch down outside a research facility where the former Leaguer Doctor Light works in her day job. She welcomes them by using her powers as a flash bang and a mob attacks, trying to infect them. Gardner's power ring is neutralized by Light's yellow blasts and she kisses Batman to pass along the mind control to him as well.

When Beetle and Miracle land at a Kord Facilities location, they are instantly swarmed and although they retreat in the Bug, Beetle has already been zombified.

Fate assures the Manhunter that they cannot be similar affected: between the power of being one of the Lords of Order and Martian physiology, they are safe. He is proven wrong as soon as they land, when his host body is overtaken and he strips off the Helmet of Fate to keep the mysterious infection from causing more damage. The Manhunter is safe and returns to the Sanctuary with the Helmet to regroup.

He notices a connection between Kord Industries locations and the outbreak but cannot figure out what is causing it until he puts on the Helmet and its powers reveal that it is a sentient single-celled organism from outer space infecting all human life. He heads back to the tiny island where the outbreak started and finds that the spore has gathered several humans—including his fellow Leaguers—there to protect their colonial existence.

Between the powers of his Martian physiology and the fact that other heroes are trying to resist mind-control, the Manhunter easily fights them off but the spore makes a kind of super-body composed of several innocent civilians who amalgamate into a large monstrosity. He cannot fight back without hurting them, so throws the Helmet into the giant mass, giving Fate control of its central consciousness. Fate tells him that he cannot control this sentience for long and that the only way to be rid of it is for his body to absorb it. He voluntarily infects himself and once his colleagues come to, he explains that he did what was necessary to save the Earth, in spite of the personal consequences.