Gotham Central #1

This 2014 Urban Comics collection brings together the acclaimed work of Ed Brubaker, Greg Rucka, and Michael Lark on Gotham Central, the celebrated series that puts Gotham's overworked, underappreciated detectives front and center. The cover sets the tone perfectly — a sharp, shadowy close-up of a hard-edged man in a suit, lit in murky green and black, his red-tinged eyes radiating menace and moral ambiguity. It's a striking visual promise of the street-level noir atmosphere that defines this series.