Fairest #9

Vertigo's Fairest brought a mature, literary sensibility to the Fables universe, and issue #9 keeps that tradition firmly in place under writer Lauren Beukes and artist Inaki Miranda. Adam Hughes's cover artwork draws two women together in an intimate, tensely charged pose — one draped in a richly patterned floral kimono with a fox's tail curling at her side, the other bare-shouldered with a cascade of long blonde hair, both set against a warm, luminous grid of shoji screens. "The Hidden Kingdom Chapter Two: Hard Boiled Wonderland" promises exactly the kind of fairy-tale noir this series does so well.