The Night Force #1

DC's Night Force launches in August 1982 with this atmospheric first issue, heralded as a "1st Issue Spectacular" and reuniting writer Marv Wolfman with cover artist Gene Colan (inked by Dick Giordano). The cover sets a suitably unsettling tone: a brooding, dark-caped figure looms enormous in the background while three smaller figures — a man in a suit, a woman engulfed in flames with arms raised, and another man crouching nearby — converge on a smoldering altar set against churning orange clouds. It's a vivid, moody introduction to a team assembled, as the cover promises, "to save mankind.