All-New X-Men #12

The cover to this 2013 Marvel NOW! issue sets a dramatic tone, with a skull-faced figure in a dark, striped costume charging up a blazing blue energy blast while a red-suited combatant absorbs — or deflects — a burst of crimson energy right at their center. Stuart Immonen and Wade von Grawbadger make every line crackle with kinetic tension, the swirling vortex behind the figures amplifying the sense that this encounter is anything but friendly. With the All-New X-Men heading into a collision with the Uncanny Avengers, issue #12 promises the kind of super-powered crossover friction that made 2013 Marvel such a charged time to be a comics reader.