Captain Atom #32

This August 1989 DC Comics entry from the Captain Atom series presents one of the most unsettling cover images the title had yet offered — the hero literally torn between two states of being, his body split between his civilian human form and his silver-and-blue quantum shell, with the tagline "There is pain and there is fear… and there is the question — 'What am I?'" making the identity crisis viscerally clear. Pat Broderick's cover pencils and inks capture Captain Atom mid-transformation, his face contorted in anguish, one side flesh and one side quantum metal, arms outstretched as if reaching for an answer that won't come. Writers Cary Bates and Greg Weisman, with interior art by Rafael Kayanan and Romeo Tanghal, bring "Shut Down Hard" to life as a story that clearly puts its hero's very nature — not just his safety — on the line.