The Night Force #6

The tagline says it all — "To save mankind, they became the Night Force" — and Gene Colan and Bob Smith's cover for this January 1983 issue makes that mission feel genuinely harrowing. A massive skull looms over the composition, its open jaws serving as a gateway from which several figures and a prowling big cat emerge in desperate flight, while a cloaked, bow-tied man dominates the foreground with an air of commanding intensity. Marv Wolfman's supernatural DC series was delivering some of its most atmospheric horror at this point, and this cover captures that brooding, high-stakes energy perfectly.