Carnage: Mind Bomb #1

Part of the Spider-Man Special Events line of 1996, this one-shot gives Warren Ellis a crack at Marvel's most unhinged symbiote — and Kyle Hotz's cover sets the tone perfectly. Carnage erupts from a sea of skulls, his red tendrils coiling outward against a swirling psychedelic background, with a shadowy silhouette looming above him like a dark omen. It's a striking, unsettling image that makes clear this is a story more interested in getting inside Carnage's fractured mind than simply watching him smash things.