Aquaman #27

A mid-1960s DC gem, this June 1966 issue promises high stakes right on its Nick Cardy cover, where giant-sized duplicates of Aquaman and Mera loom over their tiny, helpless originals caught in swirling jets of water — and a dire speech bubble warns that one squeeze could reduce them to "heaps of bone." The story is billed as "The Battle of the Rival Aquamen," and the cover's sense of scale and peril makes it easy to see why the odds are described as thoroughly stacked against our heroes. Cardy's fluid linework and bold colors give the whole scene an irresistible underwater energy that holds up beautifully nearly six decades on.