Gang Busters #62

Few crime comics could cook up a premise quite this nerve-wracking: Detective Bartlow staggers into frame with a ticking bomb contraption locked around his head, counting down to detonation in one hour, while a uniformed officer looks on in alarm behind him. The cover — penciled and inked by Bob Brown — delivers that dread with remarkable clarity, the device's glowing red tick marks making the danger feel almost uncomfortably real. This 1958 DC entry in the long-running Gang Busters series, featuring the story "The Sleuth in the Iron Mask," is a ten-cent slice of mid-century crime comics tension at its most inventive.