Firestorm #94

Tom Mandrake's cover for this 1990 DC issue presents a striking noir tableau: a trench-coated, fedora-wearing man — posed as a hard-boiled detective — leans back at a cluttered desk with a gun in hand, while a small Firestorm figure glows in the upper corner and a framed portrait hangs on the wall behind him. The bold cover copy "Martin Stein, Private Eye?!" signals that John Ostrander's story "The Dead Past" takes the nuclear hero's human half somewhere unexpected. It's a genuinely intriguing visual mash-up of superhero comics and pulp detective fiction from the Ostrander & Mandrake creative team.