Fray #5

Joss Whedon's futuristic Slayer saga reaches its fifth chapter with a cover that puts the vulnerabilities of its blue-haired protagonist front and center — Fray crouches alone on the ground while a looming cast of figures, including a menacing dark-clad villain, a monstrous horned creature, and a pair of seemingly unconscious companions, tower over her. Karl Moline and Andy Owens render the composition with a striking warm-red palette that amplifies the sense of isolation and mounting pressure bearing down on her. Part five of eight, this 2001 Dark Horse release makes it clear that Whedon's sci-fi Slayer mythos is heading somewhere genuinely unsettling.