Outlaw Nation #5

Glenn Fabry's painted cover for Outlaw Nation #5 assembles a striking cast of characters — a shaven-headed man clutching a "Pulp" comic in the foreground, a cigarette-smoking redheaded woman at his side, a lean figure in a tank top behind them, a cold-eyed man with a rifle in the upper right, and a grotesque rotting figure looming in the shadows at the left. It's a moody, lived-in lineup that feels equal parts crime fiction and dark fantasy, perfectly suited to Vertigo's mature-readers sensibility in 2001. Jamie Delano and Goran Sudžuka's "Need to Be Nervous" promises exactly the kind of uneasy storytelling this cover quietly radiates.