Midnight Nation #9

J. Michael Straczynski's celebrated series reaches its ninth chapter with a cover by Gary Frank and Jonathan Sibal that sets a genuinely haunting tone — two figures, a man and a dark-haired woman, stand together against a glowing city skyline while an imposing, pale-faced figure looms enormous in the sky above them, marked by a distinctive red symbol. The tension between the intimate and the ominous is beautifully composed, hinting at the story's title, "Explanations, Valid and Otherwise," and whatever reckoning may be approaching for these characters. Midnight Nation remains one of the more thoughtful supernatural series of 2002, and this issue looks to deliver more of the atmospheric dread that has defined the run.