Thunderbolts #18

This September 1998 issue of Marvel's Most Wanted: Thunderbolts delivers a cover by Mark Bagley and Scott Hanna that's all about overwhelming odds — a blue-haired figure in a lightning-bolt costume is crumpled on a cracked stone floor, dwarfed by two towering figures looming from above, while a white-haired woman in ornate armor and a hulking robotic figure close in from below. The tight, downward-looking perspective makes the surrounded hero feel genuinely small and vulnerable, giving the whole image a tense, cornered energy that pulls you straight in. Kurt Busiek's "Career Opportunities" promises the kind of morally tangled drama this run does so well.