Kamandi, the Last Boy on Earth #9

Few comic covers from 1973 capture desperate, mid-air peril quite like this one — Kamandi and his companions fight for their lives inside a hot-air balloon basket as massive, snarling bat-creatures swarm in from every direction, clawing at the gondola while guns blaze in return. Jack Kirby's pencils and Mike Royer's inks pack the scene with tremendous kinetic energy, the enormous lead bat looming on the left with bared fangs while smaller creatures fill the sky around the beleaguered group. The cover's bold tagline promises that "Tracking Site" — billed as the strangest city on Earth — holds wonders and terrors that even Paris and Rome can't match, making this issue an irresistible slice of Kirby's wildly imaginative post-apocalyptic world.