100 Bullets #90

Dave Johnson's cover for issue #90 delivers a striking close-up of a hard-edged man with a cigarette clenched between his lips, rendered in loose, expressive linework streaked with blood red — a butterfly knife jutting into the foreground completes the mood of coiled menace. Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso's Vertigo noir series was deep into its endgame by June 2008, and this "Chapter Two: Lost in a Roman" installment carries all the tension you'd expect from a book that never flinches. If you've been following this sprawling crime epic, the raw urgency of Johnson's cover alone makes it hard to put back on the shelf.