Thanos #8

Marvel's 2004 Thanos series reaches its eighth issue with "Samaritan Part 2 of 6," and this cover by Keith Giffen puts the Mad Titan front and center in a striking close-up — purple-skinned and impassive, gripping a gnarled staff against a turbulent cosmic backdrop of swirling gold and black. There's a quiet menace to the composition, Thanos rendered not as a raging conqueror but as something almost contemplative, which makes him all the more unsettling. With Ron Lim on interior art and Giffen writing, "Dark Alliances" promises the kind of cosmic-scale storytelling this character demands.