Ultimate Spider-Man #131

Part of the sweeping Ultimatum crossover, Ultimate Spider-Man #131 finds our web-slinger in serious trouble — the cover by Stuart Immonen shows a massive, grey-skinned brute looming over a battered Spider-Man, one enormous hand gripping the hero while the other hoists what appears to be heavy machinery overhead. The sheer scale and tension of that image — Peter pinned beneath a towering figure of raw physical power — sets a genuinely urgent tone for this chapter of the Ultimate Universe's most harrowing event. Bendis, Immonen, von Grawbadger, and Ponsor bring their full collaborative weight to this 2009 tie-in, and the cover alone makes clear that things have gotten very dire, very fast.