Batman Confidential #24

Part three of "The Joker's Killer Comedy" arc puts a seasoned detective front and center — a silver-haired cop with a badge around his neck and a gun leveled at something just out of frame, his glowing eyes wide with alarm against a fiery Gotham skyline. The tagline "Good Cop, Dead Cop?!" makes the stakes bracingly clear, and Stéphane Roux's cover art captures that tense, anything-can-happen energy with real precision. Andrew Kreisberg and Scott McDaniel keep this thriller arc firing on all cylinders in this February 2009 installment.