Silver Surfer #-1

Part of Marvel's 1997 "Flashback" event, this minus-numbered issue sends the Silver Surfer hurtling into his past — and the cover by Ron Garney and Bob Wiacek sets an immediately unsettling tone. The Surfer is shown collapsed and vulnerable while a pair of large, pale, pink-eyed alien beings loom over him, with a towering Galactus watching ominously in the background and a dazed human figure sprawled in the foreground. The cover's urgent captions — "Who ARE these mysterious creatures?" and "What mind-staggering fate do they have planned for the Sentinel of the Spaceways?!" — perfectly capture the cosmic dread J. M. DeMatteis brings to Norrin Radd's earliest days in service to the World-Devourer.