Action Comics #649

Part three of "The Brainiac Trilogy" arrives in this January 1990 issue, and George Pérez's cover makes the stakes unmistakably clear — Superman braces himself amid a landscape of rubble and pink energy discharge while Brainiac's massive, menacing mechanical head looms before him, wreathed in explosive flame and eerie green light. The sheer scale of that robotic visage dwarfing the Man of Steel gives the confrontation a real sense of weight and danger. With Roger Stern writing and Pérez joined by Kerry Gammill and Brett Breeding on interior art, this is a creative team firing on all cylinders for what looks to be a thrilling finale to the arc.