Art Ops #11

Vertigo's wildly inventive series reaches issue #11 with a cover by Michael Allred that perfectly captures the book's surreal sensibility — a figure in a sleek black bodysuit tumbles weightlessly through a dreamlike tangle of enormous painted forms, while below, a blue-haired young woman and a brown-haired man reach toward each other amid the chaos. The contrast between the grounded intimacy of those two figures and the acrobatic shadow-casting diver above gives the image a genuinely striking tension. With Simon, Davis, and Allred's distinct creative voices all in play, this "Popism" interlude looks like one of 2016's more memorable single-issue detours.