One Piece #48

Volume 48 of Eiichiro Oda's One Piece arrives in Sweden through Bonnier Carlsen's manga line, subtitled Äventyret på spökenas ö — "The Adventure on the Island of Ghosts." The cover, drawn and inked by Oda himself, puts Luffy front and center in a fierce battle stance, dwarfed by a massive, roaring creature looming behind him with enormous curved horns and a skeletal, wide-open maw. It's a striking image that captures the series' talent for pairing its rubber-limbed hero against genuinely unsettling opponents, and 2009 was a fine year to be following the Straw Hats into ever-stranger territory.