Secret Invasion #4

The midpoint of Marvel's eight-issue event series arrives with a striking Gabriele Dell'Otto cover that puts a grim, eye-patch-wearing figure front and center, flanked by a raging Hulk crackling with lightning energy, a red-caped figure lunging from the shadows behind, and an archer crouched and ready at the lower right. It's a tense, atmospheric composition — all brooding urgency — that captures exactly the sense of fractured alliances and uncertain loyalties at the heart of the Skrull invasion storyline. With Brian Michael Bendis writing and Leinil Francis Yu on interior art, issue four of eight keeps this 2008 limited series firing on all cylinders.