Astro Boy #10

Osamu Tezuka's pocket-sized digest brings us volume 23 of his original manga in this 2002 Dark Horse collection, featuring the story "Astro vs. Garon" — and the cover makes the stakes immediately clear. Astro Boy charges fists-first toward the viewer, jet boots blazing, while an enormous dark mechanized giant looms overhead with gaping maw and outstretched claws, surrounded by a storm of scattered robot debris. Tezuka's cover art — both pencils and inks his own — captures that wonderful tension between the small, determined hero and the overwhelming mechanical menace bearing down on him.