DMZ #69

Brian Wood and Riccardo Burchielli's long-running Vertigo series continues with issue #69, the third chapter of "The Five Nations of New York." John Paul Leon's cover sets a quietly tense mood — two figures linger at outdoor tables on what looks like an urban rooftop or waterfront deck, one slumped in a chair wearing a Union Jack top, the other reading a newspaper, while a cluster of pigeons mills about in the foreground against a hazy industrial skyline. It's a deceptively still image that captures DMZ's signature atmosphere of ordinary life persisting in an extraordinary, war-fractured Manhattan.