Manifest Destiny #18

Matthew Roberts' cover for Manifest Destiny #18 is a genuinely unsettling image — a battered, blood-speckled figure in frontier clothing grins directly at the viewer while presenting a stovepipe hat atop a bundle of official-looking documents, flanked by two stern soldiers bearing rifles against a warm amber sky. That unnerving smile, paired with the ceremonial offering of the hat, strikes a tone somewhere between triumph and menace that feels perfectly suited to Chris Dingess's darkly reimagined Lewis and Clark saga. If you've been following this Skybound/Image series, issue #18 looks like a compelling reason to keep going.