Strange Adventures #84

This September 1957 DC gem features a wonderfully unsettling cover by penciler Gil Kane and inker Joe Giella: a stern, sharply dressed man peers down at a tiny ringed spacecraft resting in his palm, while minuscule figures inside cry out that they won't stay imprisoned in his safety deposit box for long. The bank vault setting in the background, complete with a uniformed guard obliviously nearby, perfectly frames the chilling scale of the threat hinted at in the featured story, "Prisoners of the Atom Universe!" Written by John Broome with interior art by Carmine Infantino and Bernard Sachs, this is a ten-cent slice of mid-century science fiction imagination at its most inventive.