Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen #117

What a wonderfully strange tableau graces this January 1969 cover by penciler Curt Swan and inker Neal Adams: a bald, cape-wearing villain presides over a chained Jimmy Olsen at what appears to be a slave auction, while in the background stand figures draped in recognizable hero capes — including Batman — on a world where everyone seems to wear one. The cover teases Otto Binder and Pete Costanza's "Planet of the Capes!" with the irresistible question of why this strange world demands its inhabitants don a hero's mantle. Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen #117 delivers exactly the kind of delightfully offbeat Silver Age premise that made this series so endearing.