Green Lantern #56

Part of DC's 2010 Brightest Day crossover, Green Lantern #56 announces itself with a genuinely unsettling cover by Doug Mahnke: an enormous, distorted face fills the frame — unmistakably Hector Hammond, his yellowed eyes wide and his gaping mouth yawning open to reveal a tiny Green Lantern trapped within, ring blazing with green energy against the darkness. It's a clever and viscerally effective image, the scale contrast alone conveying just how dire the Emerald Knight's predicament feels. Geoff Johns and Mahnke were producing some of their most inventive work together during this era, and this issue — "The New Guardians Chapter Four" — looks to be no exception.