Dial H #8

Part of DC's New 52 initiative, Dial H #8 arrives in 2013 with a cover by Brian Bolland that is genuinely unsettling in the best way — a mass of identical suited men, each clutching or gesturing with that mysterious rotary dial, converge on a gray-skinned, red-dotted figure and a cloaked redhead below them. The story is titled "Dozens," and Bolland's image makes that literal, the multiplying threat rendered with his characteristic precision and cool menace. Writer China Miéville and artist Alberto Ponticelli continue their strange, imaginative take on heroic identity — and this cover alone signals that issue #8 is not playing it safe.