Secret Wars #9

The nine-issue saga comes to its thunderous conclusion with this Alex Ross cover that says everything without saying a word: a silver-armored figure and a green-caped, iron-masked Doctor Doom locked in a blinding, reality-shattering clash at the center of the image, with fragments of Battleworld's many domains — Spider-Man, soldiers, cosmic landscapes, haunted faces — spiraling outward from the explosion of white light between them. Jonathan Hickman's sweeping script, Esad Ribić's painterly art, and Ive Svorcina's rich colors have made Secret Wars one of Marvel's most ambitious event series of 2016, and this finale feels like the weight of every previous issue bearing down on a single moment. If you've been following Battleworld from the beginning, this is the payoff.