Kill or Be Killed #17

Ed Brubaker, Sean Phillips, and Elizabeth Breitweiser's noir thriller reaches its seventeenth chapter, and the cover alone signals things have taken a desperate turn — a young man in what appears to be a straitjacket crouches on a padded surface, clutching a red cloth with wide, frightened eyes. Sean Phillips renders the scene with unsettling realism, and Breitweiser's muted golden palette makes the figure's panic feel all the more claustrophobic and raw.