Batgirl #22

This September 2013 New 52 entry pulls no punches: the cover by Alex Garner shows Batgirl's costume — bat-symbol and all — pierced by a blade, blood pooling and dripping below, while an unseen figure grips the knife with unsettling calm. The tagline "The Ultimate Sacrifice!" makes the stakes unmistakably clear, and Garner's painterly, close-cropped composition gives the image a raw, almost visceral intimacy. With Gail Simone writing and Fernando Pasarin on interior art, this is one of those issues that uses its cover to ask a genuinely uncomfortable question about what Barbara Gordon may have to give up.