Strange Adventures #83

The cover of this 1957 DC gem sets up a delicious paradox: a professor stands at a chalkboard declaring time travel between past and future impossible — while seated right in his classroom, apparently unnoticed, is a figure bearing a striking resemblance to Abraham Lincoln, complete with students and onlookers wearing strange headset devices amid a burst of brilliant light. Gil Kane's pencils and Joe Giella's inks give the scene a wonderfully deadpan tension, playing the absurdity perfectly straight. "Assignment in Eternity!" promises exactly the kind of clever, high-concept science fiction that made Strange Adventures a standout anthology title of its era.