Automatic Kafka #3

Ashley Wood's painterly cover for Automatic Kafka #3 sets an intimate, unsettling tone — a pale, sharp-featured man in a dark jacket leans close to a woman, their figures rendered in Wood's signature smudged monochromes that blur the line between tenderness and menace. The tagline "a superhero comicbook for men" adds a sardonic edge perfectly in keeping with Joe Casey and Wood's unconventional WildStorm series. Issue three, cover-dated November 2002, carries that brooding atmosphere right through to its title, "Teen Mean Machines.