Superman #421

Superman himself is the star of a genuinely unsettling nine-panel grid on this 1986 DC cover, penciled by Denys Cowan and inked by Jerry Ordway — each television screen trapping the Man of Steel (and a snarling antagonist) in a different moment of desperate struggle, selling the "Trapped in IMP-TV!" premise with real visual punch. The teaser "This Thriller Is for Real!" and the corner question — "Who are the Lords of the Ultra Realm?" — hint at a story with plenty of imaginative menace waiting inside from the creative team of Cary Bates and Curt Swan. At 75 cents, it's a sharp slice of mid-'80s Superman storytelling wrapped in one of the more inventive cover designs of its era.