Billy the Kid #44

Charlton's Billy the Kid #44 from 1964 puts the legendary outlaw front and center in a tense rooftop standoff — cover artists Dick Giordano and Pat Masulli frame a defiant Billy facing down a sheriff and his deputy, with a downed figure sprawled between them and guns already drawn on both sides. The cover caption pointedly asks what's driving Billy to draw against the very law he's sworn to uphold, teasing the interior story "Behind the Badge" written by Joe Gill with art by Rocco Mastroserio. It's a sharp, energetic Western cover that captures the moral tension at the heart of the Kid's complicated legend.