Astro Boy #9

Volume 23 of Osamu Tezuka's original series comes to life in this 2002 Dark Horse collection, featuring cover art penciled and inked by Tezuka himself — and what a cover it is. Astro Boy surges toward the viewer with fists raised and jet flames blazing from his boots, while an enormous dark robot looms behind him, its mechanical arms outstretched amid a swirling storm of scattered robot parts and debris. It's a striking composition that captures exactly the kind of determined, wide-eyed heroism that has made Tezuka's pint-sized robot champion so enduring, here paired with the story "The Secret of the Egyptian Conspirators.