Doctor Fate #3

The penultimate chapter of this 1987 four-issue DC limited series arrives with one of the most unsettling covers of its year — a massive, grinning maw of jagged teeth fills the entire image, with Batman, Dr. Fate, and a snarling green creature caught helplessly within its jaws, tendrils coiling around them. Keith Giffen and Dave Hunt's cover work is viscerally effective, turning the heroes into something that looks uncomfortably close to prey. With J. M. DeMatteis writing and the series building toward its conclusion, "Strangers" promises the kind of mythic, psychologically charged storytelling this creative team does so well.