Conan Saga #47

Earl Norem's painted cover pulls you straight into the depths as a muscular Conan drives his blade into a grotesque, tentacled sea creature amid a swirl of bubbles, while a red-haired figure drifts nearby in the murky underwater gloom. It's Part 1 of 2 of "The Pool of the Black One," and the sheer physicality of the struggle — Conan grappling with those writhing, alien limbs — sets a genuinely unsettling tone for this 1991 Marvel black-and-white magazine. Fans of sword-and-sorcery adventure rendered with visceral painted detail will find this one hard to set down.