Checkmate #4

DC's spy-thriller series heads to the canals of Venice in this July 1988 issue, and Gil Kane's cover captures the tension beautifully — a yellow-and-blue armored Checkmate agent hurls himself through the air toward a gun-toting man in a white suit and straw hat, while below them two more armed figures menace a terrified woman in a swamped gondola. Kupperberg, Erwin, and Vey bring the intrigue, but it's Kane's dynamic composition — all vertiginous angles and churning water — that makes this one hard to put down before you've even opened it.