Henrique Alvim Corrêa's Martian Tripod Attack – War of the Worlds 1906

Panicked soldiers fire uselessly at a Martian war machine rising from the treeline in this chilling pen-and-ink scene. Silhouetted infantry discharge their rifles in desperate futility as smoke billows across a wooded riverbank, while in the foreground a cowering observer watches helplessly from the shadows. Corrêa's masterful crosshatching captures chaos and dread with remarkable economy, distilling H.G. Wells's alien invasion to its most visceral human moment — mankind's first, doomed military encounter with the Martians.