Superman #51

A mustached man in formal attire dominates this striking 1991 cover, his large hands gripping a golden scepter topped with a crowned skull while he peers intently through a diamond-shaped crystal — within which Superman himself appears trapped and struggling. Jerry Ordway's cover art delivers a wonderfully unsettling sense of menace, framing the Man of Steel as small and vulnerable against this well-dressed mystery villain. "The Menace of the Mysterious Mr. Z!" promises exactly the kind of deliciously sinister intrigue that makes Superman's rogues' gallery so compelling.