Superboy #189

Nick Cardy's cover for Superboy #189 sets an immediately unsettling tone: Superboy and a woman recoil in the doorway of a brightly lit room, their faces etched with shock, while a massive, ominous silhouette looms before them — their cries of "Oh, no! Jonathan—!" and "Dad—!" hanging in the air. The issue promises two complete stories, headlined by "The Curse of the Hangman's Noose!" alongside the bonus tale "Runaway Superbaby," making this a genuinely packed 1972 package from DC. With interior work by Leo Dorfman, Bob Brown, Murphy Anderson, and Ben Oda, this is a solid slice of early-'70s Bronze Age storytelling at a very different era's twenty-cent price point.