The Defenders #41

This November 1976 issue sets up a genuinely tense dilemma right on the cover: the Hulk is mid-leap, fists raised to smash a massive floating cube, while Doctor Strange and another robed figure are trapped inside it, desperately warning him that their very life forces are linked to the cube — if it shatters, so do they. Gil Kane's pencils and Dan Adkins' inks give the scene real kinetic energy, with the fiery red background and the Hulk's determined charge making the stakes feel immediate. It's a wonderfully constructed cover problem that makes it hard not to flip the page and find out how the Defenders talk their way out of this one.