Thriller #9

Alex Niño's cover for Thriller #9 (August 1984) is a fever-dream of cosmic menace — a towering green face looms behind two struggling figures locked in combat, while grotesque alien creatures with gnashing fangs and unsettling eyes crowd the edges, and a small vignette at the bottom hints at figures in an eerie, contained world. Bill DuBay and Niño's collaboration on this DC series consistently pushed against the boundaries of mainstream 1984 superhero aesthetics, and this issue — "East of Euthanasia" — looks to be no exception. If you appreciate genuinely strange, visually inventive comics from an era when DC was willing to take real creative risks, this one belongs in your collection.