Azrael #23

The "Angel in Hiding" arc reaches its third and final chapter here, with Barry Kitson and James Pascoe delivering a cover that crackles with menace — a woman in purple lies vulnerable in the foreground while an armored, skull-faced figure looms behind her wielding a torch, and a shadowy dark figure with a red emblem watches ominously from the background. The tagline "Prelude to War!" promises that this conclusion is less an ending than a powder keg, and Dennis O'Neil's Azrael series was reliably delivering this kind of high-stakes tension throughout 1996.