Bionic Man #4

The cover by Alex Ross says it all — a surgically masked team surrounds a figure whose upper body is still unmistakably human while his lower half has already been rebuilt in gleaming silver metal, blue cables threading through the composition like veins of a new kind of life. "Chapter Four: Transformation" is right there in the title, and Ross's painted tableau of scalpels, surgical trays, and gloved hands captures that pivotal threshold between flesh and machine with striking, almost clinical intensity. With Kevin Smith and Phil Hester driving the script and Jonathan Lau's linework brought to life by Ivan Nunes's colors, this 2011 Dynamite issue feels like essential reading for anyone drawn to the haunting drama of a man being rebuilt from the ground up.