Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 9 #8

A ghostly, semi-transparent Buffy dominates this 2012 Dark Horse cover, her cool blue eyes gazing outward from a bank of surveillance monitors displaying snarling faces — a striking image that immediately signals something is deeply, unsettlingly off about the Slayer's situation. Flanking her are two figures: a shaved-headed young woman with a purple mohawk strip and a pink-tattooed arm gripping a weapon, and a young man in a casual jacket, both standing as if navigating a world where Buffy exists only as a digital phantom. Phil Noto's artwork sets a quietly eerie tone for "Apart (of Me), Part One," with the arc's title rendered as computer code — `C:>>apart (of_me)` — hinting at themes of identity and disconnection that writer Andrew Chambliss and Scott Allie are clearly ready to dig into.