Mystery in Space #117

In the infinite darkness they are waiting!" promises the cover of this 1981 DC anthology, and the central image delivers on that tension immediately — a man split down the middle between human and gleaming mechanical cyborg form, rage and anguish etched across his face as he cries out that he's been "turned into a monster." Behind him, a worried woman shields a child while an older man in a green cloak pleads that the transformation was the only way to save his life. Dave Cockrum and Dick Giordano craft a cover that makes the human cost of science fiction transformation feel genuinely unsettling, and with J. M. DeMatteis writing and Carmine Infantino on interior art, "The Lazarus Fire!" has real creative firepower behind it.