Before Watchmen: Comedian #5

The penultimate chapter of Brian Azzarello and J. G. Jones's Before Watchmen: Comedian arrives with a cover that stops you cold — a grinning skull bearing the Comedian's signature smiley-face button looms over a helmeted, wire-bound head against a scorched, smoky backdrop, conjuring themes of war, mortality, and dark irony in a single haunting image. J. G. Jones's painted linework gives the whole composition a grim, weathered weight that feels entirely at home in the brutal world Eddie Blake inhabits. With one issue remaining in this 2013 miniseries, "Kicks" promises to push the story toward its conclusion with the same unflinching intensity the series has carried throughout.