Batman: Gotham After Midnight #2

Kelley Jones's cover for this second chapter of Steve Niles's twelve-part horror series sets an unmistakably gothic tone — a towering, robed figure wielding an axe looms over a kneeling Batman amid a sea of candles and stained glass, while a masked accomplice snarls "Off with his head!" The subtitle "The Axe-Man Cometh!" makes the threat delightfully blunt, and the skull-adorned altar in the background suggests this confrontation is taking place somewhere deeply sinister even by Gotham's standards. If you've been looking for a Batman book that leans hard into atmospheric dread, this 2008 series is delivering exactly that.