Kurt Busiek's Astro City #18

Kurt Busiek's Astro City #18 brings "The Empty Shell" to the Homage Comics line with a genuinely unsettling cover by Alex Ross — a massive, hollow metallic face dominates the image, its features cracked and cavernous, with small silhouetted human figures reflected within its eyes and mouth as bursts of golden light flare around them. The contrast between those tiny, vulnerable people and the vast, expressionless shell they're mirrored in sets a quietly haunting tone that's hard to shake. Brent E. Anderson, Will Blyberg, and Alex Sinclair bring the interior to life in this 1999 chapter of Busiek's celebrated portrait of superhero life.