JLA #48

Part two of "The Queen of Fables" arrives with a haunting image: Wonder Woman lies unconscious inside what appears to be a storybook, a white rose resting on her chest, while a ring of hands — some recognizably human, others distinctly alien or monstrous — reach in from all sides. The cover by Bryan Hitch and Paul Neary captures a fairy-tale dread that feels genuinely unsettling, framing Diana as both prisoner and centerpiece of something sinister. Mark Waid's run on JLA was firing on all cylinders in 2000, and this middle chapter promises the kind of imaginative tension that made this era of the series so compelling.