Animal Man #5

Brian Bolland's cover for this 1988 DC "New Format" issue delivers one of the most striking images in the series: Animal Man lies sprawled and dazed on a rubble-strewn road, his blue-and-orange costume vivid against the gritty asphalt, while a giant hand holding a paintbrush intrudes from the lower right — literally drawing the hero's own legs into existence. It's a wonderfully unsettling image that hints at questions of reality and authorship swirling around Buddy Baker. Inside, Grant Morrison, Chas Truog, and Doug Hazlewood bring you "The Coyote Gospel," a story that has clearly earned its reputation as a highlight of this era's superhero storytelling.