Operation: Doomsday

Operation: Doomsday was the comeback of Daniel Dumile, who had been Zev Love X of KMD until his brother's death and the shelving of Black Bastards. He reappeared at open mics in New York with his face covered and a new name, MF DOOM, and his first album came out on Bobbito Garcia's Fondle 'Em Records on 19 October 1999.

The cover is a comic-book panel: DOOM in his metal mask and a green hoodie, gripping a microphone against a lightning-streaked red sky, with the title bursting out in jagged lettering. DOOM did the drawing himself. "Yeah I did the art," he said. "All the album covers that we ever did, I did the artwork," adding that the graffiti artist "KEO helped me out with the album cover, the coloring."

The character was modelled on Marvel's Doctor Doom, and the drawing turned that villain into DOOM's permanent public face. Licensing issues complicated later reissues, and the 2011 edition used a new painting by Jason Jägel, but the original hand-drawn sleeve is the one that introduced the villain to the world.