Metal Men #7

The cover of Metal Men #7 (1964) delivers an instantly gripping image: Doc Magnus, wide-eyed with terror, is forced to aim a pistol directly at the reader — the gun itself composed of his own miniaturized Metal Men, their tiny faces twisted in anguish as speech bubbles cry out "We're helpless, too!" and "Not to fire — Doc!" The villain identified in the cover blurb, the Sun-Brain, has turned DC's most loyal robot team into a weapon against their own creator, a genuinely unsettling twist rendered with sharp expressiveness by cover penciler Ross Andru and inker Mike Esposito. Robert Kanigher's "The Living Gun!" promises one of the more inventive dilemmas in this 1964 series — a team that can't fight back without destroying the man they exist to protect.