Marvel Comics; 40¢

What makes the best comic book covers? It’s a great topic for debate. For us as individuals there is no wrong answer, of course. It’s purely subjective. But with a little thought it is frequently possible to explain what it is about a particular image that grabs you. The best ones are the ones that make you stop and check out something you weren’t previously going to purchase – and in some cases, you even end up picking up a title you’ve never even heard of before.

Falling in one of the greatest – if not the greatest – era of Avengers stories, coming on the heels of “The Korvac Saga” and kicking off the Chthon story arc, Avengers #185 is a superb, striking cover.

Although the interiors were by John Byrne and inker Dan Green, the cover duties fell to George Pérez and inker Terry Austin, who took the concept of a strong image of brother and sister mutants, Pietro and Wanda Maximoff, better known as Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch, and infused it with all sorts of unexpected power.

The characters had always enjoyed periods of high-profile success with fans, but they had remained ones that needed solid story concepts to really make them shine. This story arc, which reshaped their origins by exploring the contradictory implications of previous tales, put them center stage.

Of course, that’s where we find the characters on the cover. A dark sky above and storm raging all around them, Quicksilver looks determined, the Scarlet Witch a bit more hesitant. The linework is just beautiful. While Pérez and Austin weren’t as synonymous as Byrne and Austin in that era, they did work wonderfully together.

The trade dress, logo and even the Byrne-illustrated team member heads all serve to help pull the image together and make it a great one. It’s even better than Byrne’s cover to Avengers #187 in the same story, a close runner-up.

– J.C. Vaughn