Batman: GCPD #3

Part three of four in this 1996 DC miniseries puts the spotlight squarely on Gotham City's finest, and the cover by Rodolfo Damaggio and Bill Sienkiewicz delivers something genuinely unsettling — a massive, snarling animal lunges from one side while a wild-eyed, long-haired figure in white thrashes violently on the other, with a smaller figure caught between them, gun raised in the chaos of churning water. The split composition creates a real sense of two dangers converging at once, making it easy to see why Gotham's cops earn their keep. With Chuck Dixon writing and Jim Aparo on interiors, "This Year's Murder" is mid-'90s Gotham street-level storytelling working at a confident pace.