Checkmate #27

This May 1990 issue of DC's espionage series puts the stakes in stark personal terms — a gunman in green fires point-blank from an industrial catwalk while a man reels backward in the foreground, shot, and two desperate figures below scramble and cry out his name, "Matthew!" The speech balloon taunting "Say goodbye to your son, Stein!" makes the threat chillingly clear, framing the "Kidnapped!" story as something far more than a standard mission. Tom Grindberg's cover art sells the chaos and desperation with real urgency, pulling readers straight into one of Checkmate's most personal crises.