The Atom #14

Few Silver Age covers capture the sheer strangeness of superhero life quite like this one. Gil Kane's pencils and Murphy Anderson's inks deliver a wildly inventive scene: a suited Ray Palmer crouches defensively atop a fallen canister while his own blue-and-red Atom costume — animated and headless — lunges at him aggressively, a lasso-like line connecting the two combatants. Palmer's thought bubble says it all: "My uniform's battling to live a life of its own! I've got to overpower it — or remain six inches tall the rest of my life!" Gardner Fox's "Revolt of the Atom's Uniform!" is vintage 1964 DC imagination at its most delightfully off-kilter, a concept so inventively absurd it could only work in the hands of creators this confident in their craft.