Spider-Man: Chapter One #5

Spider-Man: Chapter One #5 puts the wall-crawler squarely in the middle of a desperate rescue, as the cover — penciled and inked by John Byrne — shows Spidey in his bold red-and-black suit lunging across a flooded, overgrown setting toward a frightened blonde woman and a young boy, while the snarling, lab-coated Lizard looms menacingly behind them. The tagline "…And Now THE LIZARD!" says it all: this 1999 series brings one of Spider-Man's most fearsome reptilian foes front and center in the story "Lost Faces." It's a vivid, kinetic cover that captures the urgency of the encounter and makes it easy to see why Byrne's retelling of Spidey's early adventures drew so much attention.