Green Lantern #19

This March 1963 issue puts Hal Jordan in a genuinely unsettling predicament right on the cover: a mysterious force compels him to sketch his own defeat at the hands of the villain Sonar and his supersonic gun, with the drawing itself depicting Green Lantern being blasted and overwhelmed. Gil Kane's pencils and Murphy Anderson's inks make the meta-framing — hero as unwilling illustrator of his own downfall — feel both clever and eerie. With John Broome scripting and the story titled "The Defeat of Green Lantern!", this is the Silver Age DC formula firing on all cylinders.