The Phantom Stranger #22

Jim Aparo's moody cover sets the tone perfectly for this December 1972 DC supernatural thriller — the Phantom Stranger looms as an enormous shadowy presence in the background, his broad-brimmed hat and stern face watching over the scene, while his caped figure in the foreground carries an unconscious blonde woman toward a storm-lashed gothic mansion crackling with lightning. "Circle of Evil!" promises exactly the kind of atmospheric horror that made this era of DC's mystery titles so compelling, and with Len Wein writing and Aparo handling virtually every creative duty on the art side, this issue delivers that combination of dread and dark elegance the series did so well in 1972.