Conan: The Lord of the Spiders #1

Part one of a three-issue saga, this 1998 Marvel series plunges Conan into arachnid-tinged darkness right from the opening cover. Raffaele and Cabrera's artwork presents the Barbarian crouched and coiled like a predator, his muscular frame marked with eerie green rune-like symbols as he grips a gleaming sword amid a tangle of massive webs — with what appears to be a monstrous, skull-like form lurking in the shadows below him. Roy Thomas brings his deep affection for the Hyborian Age to "The Webs We Weave," and this moody, atmospheric opener sets a tone that fans of sword-and-sorcery storytelling will find hard to resist.