Captain Marvel Jr. #88

Even the World's Mightiest Boy can be caught off guard — here, Captain Marvel Jr. stands wide-eyed and flustered amid a forest of alarming public-service signs warning citizens not to breathe too heavily, start fires, or "be an air hog," exclaiming "Holy Moley! This air shortage is really getting bad!" Kurt Schaffenberger's cover for this August 1950 Fawcett issue perfectly captures the tongue-in-cheek absurdity of a superhero baffled by a crisis no amount of lightning-bolt power can simply punch away. With a full 52 pages of full-color adventure inside — including the promised "Captain Marvel Jr. Battles the Air Shortage" — this is a wonderfully offbeat slice of Golden Age comics storytelling from writer Otto Binder and artist Joe Certa.