All-American Comics #53

From 1943, this issue of All-American Comics puts Green Lantern front and center in a charmingly urgent wartime scenario — the cover tagline "Green Lantern Delivers the Mail!" says it all, and Irwin Hasen's cover art brings it to life with the masked, red-suited hero striding purposefully through a cascade of scattered letters spilling from a burst U.S. mail sack. It's a wonderfully grounded premise for a superhero story, with Alfred Bester writing and Paul Reinman and Sam Burlockoff handling interior art on "The Mail Goes Through!" — suggesting that even in 1943, keeping communications moving was a mission worthy of a ring-powered hero.