Next Men: Aftermath #40

John Byrne's Next Men: Aftermath reaches its 40th issue with a cover that throws together an astonishing collision of eras — a wide-eyed woman in a blue-and-white jumpsuit sprints in open-mouthed alarm at the center, flanked by a Roman soldier on horseback, a snarling prehistoric creature, a feral primitive figure, and an armored robot brandishing a weapon, all scrambling across a debris-strewn landscape. The "Mosaic" story title feels perfectly suited to this chaotic assembly of wildly mismatched figures bearing down on the viewer. Byrne's linework, colored by Ronda Pattison, gives the whole scene an urgent, kinetic energy that makes this 2012 IDW issue genuinely hard to put down without opening it.