Astro City #15

A cramped, wonderfully cluttered workshop takes center stage on Alex Ross's cover for this November 2014 Vertigo issue, where a blond figure in headphones works intently at a sparking mechanical device, surrounded by an extraordinary assembly of robots, cyborgs, and strange beings looming in the shadows above. The sheer density of characters packed into that space — from a hulking purple-skinned figure at left to gleaming mechanical forms overhead — gives the scene a lived-in, almost familial quality that feels perfectly at home in Astro City's humanist corner of superhero storytelling. Kurt Busiek and Brent Eric Anderson bring "Friends & Relations" to life here, and Ross's richly painted cover sets a mood that's equal parts mechanical wonder and quiet intimacy.