A storm has been brewing throughout the course of Alex Ross and Jim Krueger’s Dynamite Entertainment series “Project Superpowers: Chapter 2.” Arc-by-arc, the impending disaster that pulled Golden Age heroes like the Black Terror and the Green Lama apart before thrusting them back together proved to be less of a metaphorical storm and the literal return of the Greek god of thunder and lightning, Zeus.

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The forces dragging the superpowers to their doom found an apocalyptic representation on [Alex] Ross’ most recent string of covers, where Zeus appeared as a mushroom-like cloud across the recent “Project Superpowers” issues -- including the cover to #12, which serves as Ross’ homage to George Perez’s famed “Crisis on Infinite Earths” #12 cover.

“It’s funny. In creating that composition, I was looking to do something that would be almost too much of a riff on that original cover by Perez,” Ross recalled. “As it worked out, the majority of our heroes don’t fly, so there wouldn’t have been the opportunity to have them all coming down on this giant creature. So this angle proved to be the most sensible, with him reaching down at the people at ground level. But I was very distinctly trying to copycat that influence, and it’s nice when influence can take you in a direction where you didn’t expect to go. None of the elements are the same, physically, but you can recognize where the inspiration comes from.”