Green Lantern Corps #31

Part three of "Sins of the Star Sapphire" arrives in this 2009 issue, and Patrick Gleason's cover tells you everything you need to know about the stakes: a Green Lantern in full uniform screams as they're engulfed by a writhing mass of grasping hands and twisting, luminous tendrils bathed in eerie yellow-gold light. The sheer number of reaching limbs — human, alien, and clawed — pressing in from every direction gives the image a genuinely unsettling sense of being overwhelmed. Serving as a "Prelude to Blackest Night," this issue from writer Peter J. Tomasi and artist Patrick Gleason builds the tension of an already gripping arc.