The Mighty Avengers #18

Part of Marvel's sweeping Secret Invasion event, this 2008 issue of The Mighty Avengers announces its stakes right on the cover: a snarling, green-skinned Skrull looms large with clawed hands outstretched, while a lower panel places a grim, eye-patch-wearing Nick Fury at a control station, a skeletal figure visible on a monitor beside him. Marko Djurdjević's painted cover work gives the whole thing a cinematic tension that feels perfectly suited to a story about hidden enemies and uncertain loyalties. With Brian Michael Bendis writing and Stefano Caselli on interior art, this is a sharp entry in one of Marvel's most ambitious crossover events of the decade.