Captain Marvel #46

A towering green tentacled villain looms over the chaos on this September 1976 cover, threatening to "mash" Captain Marvel into slime while Rick Jones battles a duplicate in the background — the stakes couldn't feel more stacked against our cosmic hero. Al Milgrom's cover art packs the frame with kinetic energy: a battered Captain Marvel surging forward through debris, Rick Jones mid-brawl with a monstrous green double, all wrapped in that bold Marvel yellow-and-red masthead declaring him "The Most Cosmic Superhero of All!" With the creative team of Steve Englehart, Chris Claremont, and Milgrom collaborating inside, "Only One Can Win!" sounds like exactly the kind of cosmic showdown this series delivered at its best.