The Uncanny X-Men #512

This cover for Uncanny X-Men #512 is a genuine treat — Yanick Paquette and Karl Story render the X-Men in a beautifully weathered, Art Nouveau-styled vintage-poster format that makes the whole thing feel like a pulp-era artifact. In the foreground, a group of X-Men in period dress — including a blue-furred Beast sporting a monocle, a white-suited figure in a fedora, a dark-haired woman, and a blonde man — are dwarfed by an enormous, red-eyed Sentinel looming ominously over a city skyline behind them. The deliberate distressing of the cover art, complete with scuffs and creases, gives the whole composition a wonderfully atmospheric, timeworn feel that makes 2009 Matt Fraction storytelling look like something unearthed from another era entirely.