The New Adventures of Superboy #5

The cover of this May 1980 DC issue tells a tense story all by itself: Superboy strains to deflect a searing energy blast with his cape as a hovering alien spacecraft looms overhead, his thought balloons revealing he's secretly lost his super-powers and is bluffing his way through the encounter. Kurt Schaffenberger and Dave Hunt deliver a wonderfully dynamic composition, with the fiery beam and billowing smoke giving the scene real urgency. Cary Bates's "Secret of the Super-Power Failures!" promises exactly the kind of high-stakes ingenuity that made early 1980s DC storytelling such a treat.