Automatic Kafka #9

Ashley Wood's painted cover for Automatic Kafka #9 is a brooding, atmospheric piece — a crouching, bald figure rendered in muted grays and washed tones, gripping a handgun in each hand with an air of coiled intensity. Wood's loose, expressive brushwork gives the image a raw, almost ghostly quality that feels entirely in keeping with this WildStorm mature-readers series. Writer Joe Casey and the multi-hyphenate Wood wrap up their unconventional superhero comic with this 2003 finale, and the cover alone signals that it was never interested in playing by the usual rules.