The Flash #256

This late-1977 DC issue presents a genuinely unsettling cover by Rich Buckler and Jack Abel: the Flash's face fills the foreground in anguished close-up, wide-eyed and overwhelmed, while above him a ghostly circular scene shows him locked in battle with the Top — a villain the cover boldly declares is already dead. The blurbs frame it as a psychological crisis, with the Scarlet Speedster mentally trapped in his own past and driven "right out of his mind." Writer Cary Bates and artist Irv Novick promise a story that pushes the Flash into territory far more harrowing than any physical race.