Pigs #3

Pigs #3 delivers one of 2011's most arresting covers, courtesy of Amanda Conner: a coolly confident young woman lounges in a chair wearing a Che Guevara tank top and a Soviet-style fur hat adorned with a red star, an American flag draped casually across her lap alongside an assault rifle. The collision of Cold War iconography — communist imagery, the stars and stripes, and that unflinching smirk — says everything about the book's layered, tension-laced premise. Writers Nate Cosby and Ben McCool, with interior art by Breno Tamura, clearly have a sharp eye for provocation, and this issue, subtitled "Rocky," looks like the perfect entry point into whatever dangerous game these characters are playing.