Batman #421

The haunting close-up on this July 1988 cover — a blonde woman's face split between composed beauty and mascara-streaked anguish — signals that "Elmore's Lady" is carrying serious emotional weight. Jerry Bingham's painterly cover work captures something raw and unsettling, the smeared tears and fragmented composition hinting at a story where someone's world has come apart. With Jim Starlin writing and Dick Giordano on interior art, this mid-series Batman entry earns its place as one of the more quietly affecting issues of the era.