Cold War #1

John Byrne writes, draws, and inks this 2011 IDW spy thriller, bringing a distinctly retro Cold War atmosphere to life in The Michael Swann Dossier. The cover sets the tone immediately: a trench-coated man in a fedora strides forward with a pistol leveled at the viewer, flanked by a distressed woman on the ground, a bespectacled woman clutching documents, and shadowy silhouettes — all framed against the Union Jack and the Soviet hammer-and-sickle, with a CCCP rocket blazing skyward. If you have any fondness for classic espionage fiction, "The Damocles Contract" looks like a genuinely compelling place to start.