Detective Comics #251

This January 1958 issue of Detective Comics teases a wild sci-fi twist with its feature story, "The Alien Batman!" The cover, penciled and inked by Sheldon Moldoff, shows Batman confronted by a yellow-costumed alien figure emerging from a large spacecraft, while a red-haired woman holding a camera looks on in astonishment — a thought bubble declaring that Batman "isn't an Earth man at all — he's from another world!" It's a wonderfully imaginative Silver Age premise that captures the era's fearless willingness to drop its greatest detective straight into outer-space intrigue.