If you read only one comic about a kid exploding in space, make it this one.
Green Lantern #162 (March, 1983), cover art by Keith Pollard
As memory serves, there was a slight brouhaha over this fairly grotesque cover at the time…it wouldn’t get a second glance today. Well, maybe a second glance, certainly not a third. And yes, the kid does explode from decompression outside the spaceship:
…even though I’m about 80% certain that isn’t what would really happen in real life. The cover did do its job, though…I had given up on GL several issues prior to this, but I had to buy this issue when I saw that cover. I mean, wouldn’t you? Yes you would, don’t lie to me.
This story took place during Green Lantern’s exile from Earth in the early 80s, a series of stories by assorted hands that started okay, got dire pretty quickly, and wrapped up with a nicely drawn Alex Toth issue in #171. You can read more about the particular sequence of stories that issue comes from (in which Hal is based on a space cruiser) here.
