Aquaman #12

This January 2004 issue presents a striking Howard Porter and Wade von Grawbadger cover: Aquaman rises from a crashing wave, his bare torso crackling with arcs of blue energy, one fist clenched at his side while the other pulses with water-born power — his green-and-orange scaled lower body still submerged in the surf beneath a glowing horizon. The composition captures a king at the boundary between worlds, commanding and quietly intense. Inside, Rick Veitch's story "Bridge over Troubled Water" promises that same charged tension, brought to life by the pencils of Yvel Guichet and inks of Mark Propst.