Freshmen #5

The penultimate chapter of Freshmen II: Fundamentals of Fear arrives with a cover by Phil Hester and Mike Manley that pulls no punches — a purple-clad, masked figure looms dominantly over a bespectacled man in a trench coat who appears to be violently sick, green energy pouring from his mouth. The uneasy dynamic between these two figures sets a tone that perfectly matches the arc's subtitle, "The Puppet and the Puppeteer." With Hugh Sterbakov writing and Jorge Correa on interiors, this 2007 Top Cow/Image series continues to blend superhero strangeness with genuinely unsettling edge.