Gangland #2

Brian Bolland's cover for this 1998 DC Vertigo anthology delivers an immediately arresting image: a portly, world-weary beat cop on a bicycle has stopped dead in his tracks, staring down at a scruffy brown dog sitting beside a severed human foot — a detail that says everything about the kind of dark, mordant crime stories waiting inside. Gangland #2 features "Killer Smile," brought to life by writer Simon Revelstroke and artist Richard Corben, a pairing well suited to Vertigo's mature, unvarnished take on the criminal underworld. If you enjoy crime fiction with a sharp sense of the absurd, this issue makes a compelling case for itself right there on the cover.