Azrael #9

Azrael cuts a striking figure on Francesco Mattina's painted cover for this August 2010 issue — armored in crusader-cross regalia, hooded and masked with a snarling red-and-black visage, and wielding a blazing sword wreathed in firelight. Looming in the shadowed background is a second, larger face — stern and watchful — that hints at a powerful presence bearing down on our antihero. Writer Fabian Nicieza and artist Ramón Bachs continue "Let Him Who is Without Sin, Part Two," promising the kind of morally charged tension that makes this series such a compelling corner of the 2010 DC universe.