Cerebus #203

February 1996 brings the third installment of the "Guys" arc, and the cover by Dave Sim and Gerhard says it all with a wry grin: a beautifully rendered full-color bottle of "Palnu Premium Gin" dominates the foreground, while a strip of black-and-white panels shows Cerebus himself attempting — with varying degrees of success — to mix a very dry cocktail. The contrast between the lovingly painted gin bottle and Cerebus's increasingly bleary comic-strip antics makes for a cover that's funny, visually inventive, and surprisingly elegant all at once. If you've been following this run, issue #203 looks like exactly the kind of deadpan character study that makes Cerebus so enduringly compelling.