Candy & Cigarettes #1

The opening volume of Tomonori Inoue's Candy & Cigarettes announces itself with striking confidence: a young girl perches on a wooden chair, arms crossed and a pistol raised to her temple, fixing the reader with an unnervingly calm blue-eyed stare. The contrast between her small, childlike frame and the cold weight of that firearm sets the series' unsettling tone immediately. If this first cover is any indication, Inoue's manga isn't shy about pushing its readers somewhere genuinely uncomfortable.