Criminal #1

Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips bring their noir sensibilities to this collected "Coward" arc, and the bold two-tone yellow cover sets the mood perfectly — a rough-edged man looms large alongside a smoking gun, with a woman's silhouette drifting nearby in quiet tension. Sean Phillips's stark, graphic design work strips the scene down to its essentials, letting shadow and negative space do the heavy lifting. If hard-boiled crime fiction is your corner of the comics world, this 2015 Image volume is a compelling place to start.