Marvel Comics

The second volume of Mark Gruenwald's defining Captain America run — featuring the legendary storyline in which Steve Rogers abandons the Captain America identity. When the US government demands Cap operate under their direct authority, Rogers refuses and becomes simply 'The Captain', while John Walker takes on the Cap mantle. This arc — one of the most politically resonant in Cap's history — directly inspired the Disney+ series The Falcon and The Winter Soldier. Essential Gruenwald, essential Captain America.

Geoff Johns's Avengers run with Olivier Coipel — the Kang Dynasty storyline — is one of the most underrated Avengers arcs of the modern era, a time-travel epic where Kang the Conqueror declares war on Earth from the year 3000 and the Avengers must fight a war spanning multiple time periods simultaneously. Johns used the time-travel framework to bring multiple versions of the Avengers into conflict with each other, and Coipel's detailed, expressive artwork gave the scale of the Kang invasion genuine visual weight.