Astro City #40

Alex Ross's painted cover for issue #40 pulls you in immediately: a silver-clad heroine with flowing hair strains upward at the center of a swirling vortex of scattered pages, while a dark-haired woman in a business suit reaches toward her from below, and a ring of menacing alien and monstrous figures looms in the shadowy blue background. The visual tension between the ordinary and the otherworldly captures exactly the kind of grounded-yet-cosmic storytelling that makes Kurt Busiek's Astro City so compelling. With interior art by Carmen Carnero and colors by Peter Pantazis, "The Party of the Second Part" looks like a rich addition to this Vertigo run.