Black Widow #13

Phil Noto's cover for this 2015 Marvel issue is quietly arresting — Natasha Romanoff stares out from behind two smoking guns, her red hair suffusing the entire image with a hazy, blood-tinged atmosphere and a sniper's crosshair centered on her chest. The painterly execution, with pigment seemingly bleeding from the weapons downward, gives the image a haunting, almost elegiac quality that fits perfectly with a story chapter titled "Autumn." Nathan Edmondson and Noto's collaboration here feels confident and moody, capturing the world-weary precision that defines this run's take on Marvel's most accomplished spy.