Silver Surfer #43

The cover of this 1990 Marvel issue declares "Sentenced to Death!" in no uncertain terms, and Ron Lim and Keith Williams deliver on that ominous promise with a striking image of the Silver Surfer — his gleaming body crackling with bursts of cosmic energy — bearing down on a grotesque, gasping alien figure against a star-filled void. The Surfer's expression is unsettlingly blank even as his outstretched hand closes in on his writhing adversary, lending the scene a cold, otherworldly dread. With Jim Starlin and Ron Marz steering the story under the title "Termination," this is the kind of issue that earns its dramatic cover.