Mage #14

Matt Wagner's Mage: The Hero Defined #14 closes in on a tense, intimate moment: a bearded man in a lightning-bolt t-shirt clutches a glowing staff in one hand while cradling a battered, barely-conscious figure with the other — that emphatic "WO!" speech bubble hanging in the air between them. Wagner pulls double duty as both writer and cover artist here, and his linework gives the scene a raw, grounded urgency that suits the series' mythology-meets-street-level tone perfectly. A strong chapter in this 1999 Image run, with Sean Konot's lettering and Jeromy Cox's moody red-and-shadow coloring rounding out a cover that's hard to look away from.