Fatale #24

Sean Phillips's cover for Fatale #24 places the series' mysterious protagonist front and center — dressed in a leather jacket and gripping a knife, she stands composed and unflinching against a churning backdrop of deep crimson and fiery orange, shadowy tendrils curling behind her like something ancient and hungry. The contrast between her near-monochromatic figure and that smoldering, supernatural inferno makes for a genuinely striking image. Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips's noir-horror series reaches its twenty-fourth issue here, and the cover alone makes clear that whatever she's walking into, she's not walking away from it lightly.