Super-Villain Team-Up #7

The cover by Rich Buckler and Klaus Janson announces "a clash of titans" in vivid red and gold, pitting the armored Dr. Doom against the blue-caped Shroud in a fierce mid-air struggle, while the Sub-Mariner charges in from above and a dark panther lurks at the Shroud's side. Marvel's most compelling anti-hero question gets posed right on the cover: "Is this dark avenger hero or villain?" — a premise that gives this 1976 series its genuine edge. With Steve Englehart writing and Herb Trimpe on interior art, Super-Villain Team-Up #7 delivers the kind of morally murky Marvel storytelling that made the mid-seventies such a rich era for the publisher.