Star Trek #16

Marvel's Star Trek series serves up one of its more delightfully strange premises with issue #16 — cover-penciled by Luke McDonnell and inked by Al Milgrom — as Spock and Captain Kirk find themselves face-to-face with a cowering, red-hat-wearing gnome, while a feral bat-creature swoops down on a struggling figure in the background. The cover's own speech bubbles tease the mystery perfectly: Spock coolly identifies the creature as "a…Gnome!" while Kirk wonders aloud what has the little being so terrified of his Vulcan companion. It's a wonderfully offbeat 1981 adventure that captures everything fun about the original crew's ability to encounter the utterly unexpected.