Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight #4

The cover of this fourth installment of "The Long Way Home" delivers a quietly arresting image: a large, close-up Buffy holds a glowing, miniaturized version of herself in her outstretched hands, the warm colors and an institutional building in the background lending the scene a surreal, introspective mood. Georges Jeanty's pencils and Dexter Vines' inks capture something genuinely haunting in that image-within-an-image — one Buffy contemplating another, smaller self bathed in light. Joss Whedon's Season Eight continuation wraps up its opening arc here, and this Dark Horse issue closes out 2007's most talked-about comics comeback with real visual confidence.