Dark Reign: Young Avengers

In the wake of Secret Invasion, Marvel's Dark Reign era finds the Young Avengers scattered and hunted, with Paul Cornell and Mark Brooks steering this five-issue 2009 limited series. The team—including Billy Kaplan, Cassandra Lang, and a new Hawkeye—faces a government-sanctioned assault led by Norman Osborn's ruthless Thunderbolts, while Big Zero, Christopher Colchiss, and Amity Hunter complicate the fight for the next generation of heroes. A tense, character-driven thriller, it captures the paranoia of the era and the struggle to define heroism under a villain's rule.