Criminal #6

Sean Phillips's cover for Criminal #6 perfectly captures the desperate, noir-soaked tension of "Bad Night Part Three of Four" — a red-haired woman in a purple coat fires a pistol into chaos while debris explodes from a brick wall behind her, and a wide-eyed man in glasses recoils in shock at her side. Ed Brubaker and Phillips were already delivering some of the sharpest crime storytelling of 2008, and this image of two people caught in a violent, shattering moment promises that the penultimate chapter raises the stakes considerably. If you've been following this arc, this cover alone makes clear there's no easy way out.