Marvel Tales #218

Few Marvel covers from 1988 cut quite this close to the bone: Mike Zeck's pencils and inks place a cold-eyed Punisher pressing a gun to the collar of a very alarmed Peter Parker, with twin speech bubbles — "I know your secret, Parker!" and "I know who you are!" — making the threat unmistakably personal. It's a tense, intimate composition against a blazing red background, with a tiny Spider-Man inset in the corner reminding you exactly what secret Frank Castle may have uncovered. Inside, "Man-Hunt!" is brought to life by writer Michael Eury and artist Alan Kupperberg, promising the kind of uneasy hero-versus-antihero friction that made the Spider-Man/Punisher dynamic so compelling throughout this era.