Batman #435

The finale of "The Many Deaths of the Batman" arrives with this tense 1989 closer, and John Byrne's cover pulls no punches — a red-coated, masked figure presses a blade to Batman's throat while the Dark Knight struggles in his grip, Gotham's skyline looming ominously in the background. It's a genuinely gripping image that captures the life-or-death stakes of a three-part mystery built around the question of who — or what — keeps turning up dead in the Caped Crusader's costume. With Byrne writing and Jim Aparo on interior art, this Byrne-Aparo-DeCarlo collaboration represents late-'80s Batman storytelling at a confident, focused peak.