Carnage U.S.A. #2

The second chapter of this five-part limited series opens with a cover that's hard to shake: Carnage rendered as a twisted Uncle Sam, red symbiote flesh rippling beneath a star-spangled top hat and blue coat, one clawed hand thrust straight at the viewer in a demand you can't ignore. Clayton Crain's painted linework gives the image a genuinely unsettling depth, turning an American icon into something feral and wrong in all the right ways. With Zeb Wells driving the story titled "Red, White and Die!," this 2012 series was clearly not shy about going for the jugular.