Excalibur #86

Excalibur heads to the mutant nation of Genosha in this February 1995 entry, and Ken Lashley and Tom Wegrzyn's cover captures the urgency perfectly — figures are thrown through a fiery, explosive chaos of red and yellow, with a wide-eyed woman in an X-emblazoned uniform lunging forward in apparent desperation while bodies churn through the inferno around her. Warren Ellis was already shaking up the title's direction by this point, and a "Mission: Genosha" arc promises the kind of high-stakes political tension that made the island nation one of Marvel's most compelling settings.