Hitman #2

From the Garth Ennis and John McCrea series comes Hitman #2, June 1996 — and John McCrea's cover makes an immediate impression: a GCPD Photo Dept. snapshot of the Joker, mouth thrown wide in a manic scream, is pinned to a surface by a large combat knife driven straight through it. The framing device is darkly clever, turning a moment of chaos into something almost clinical, and the lurid sunset palette behind the Clown Prince of Crime gives the whole image a genuinely unsettling energy. Part two of "A Rage in Arkham" promises that Tommy Monaghan's world and Gotham's most unpredictable villain are very much on a collision course.