The Inferior Five #6

The Inferior Five find themselves completely surrounded and outnumbered on this February 1968 cover by Mike Sekowsky and Mike Esposito, as a massive crowd of DC's finest — including Superman, Batman, Robin, The Flash, and a host of other heroes — closes in on the bumbling quintet, demanding to know why they can't be proper superheroes. The back-and-forth speech bubbles ("'Cause I'm a coward!" / "Let's wipe them out!") perfectly capture the comedic tension that made this series such a refreshing satirical treat in DC's lineup. With a story titled "How to Make a Bomb!" and the whole DC universe apparently fed up with our hapless heroes, this issue promises the kind of good-natured superhero parody that E. Nelson Bridwell and Sekowsky delivered so well.