Adventures of Superman #597

Part of DC's 2001 "Joker: Last Laugh" crossover event, this issue of The Adventures of Superman announces its stakes with a cover that stops you cold. Tim Sale fills the entire image with a grotesquely grinning bald figure — almost certainly a Jokerized Lex Luthor — rendered in stark black, white, and grey, flanked by two distressed figures caught in orange-tinted shadow, while the cover copy pointedly asks, "Why is this man smiling?" It's a genuinely unsettling design from Sale, and with Joe Casey writing and Derec Aucoin on interior art, this December 2001 tie-in has plenty of personality to match its provocative cover.