Ultimate Spider-Man #25

Against a pale full moon, the Green Goblin looms menacingly over a rooftop ledge, clutching an unconscious red-haired young woman in his clawed arms — a genuinely unsettling image that captures the danger at the heart of this 2002 Marvel series. Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Bagley were producing some of their most compelling work together on Ultimate Spider-Man, and this cover — penciled and inked by Bagley — sets a tense, atmospheric tone for the "Plasmids" chapter. If you're following Peter Parker's reimagined world, this is one of those issues where the cover alone makes it hard to put back on the shelf.