Black Badge #3

This cover by Matt Kindt says everything about the series' darkly clever premise: a young scout stands loaded down with an extraordinary pack crammed with explosive arrows, a reclaimed dirty bomb, a Kevlar-lined sleeping bag, infrared binoculars, plastic explosives, and a frying-pan-turned-satellite-dish — each item meticulously labeled alongside more personal burdens like "guilt over lost friends" and "harbored resentment toward adults for problems of the world." It's a brilliantly unsettling diagram that treats childhood espionage gear and emotional baggage with equal weight, rendered in Tyler Jenkins and Hilary Jenkins's warm, weathered watercolor style. Black Badge #3 continues BOOM! Studios' sharp, inventive series that finds genuine unease in the gap between a scout's innocent uniform and the very dangerous world hiding underneath it.