Promethea #23

This striking issue of Promethea presents a cover rendered in elegant gold linework inspired by Alphonse Mucha, with Promethea herself at center — long-haired, adorned with an elaborate radiant headdress, and a coiled serpent winding around her lower half — while doves take flight around her in graceful arcs. The Art Nouveau aesthetic, realized here by J. H. Williams III, feels perfectly suited to a series that has always treated its visuals as something close to illuminated art. With a title like "The Serpent and the Dove," the symbolic tension between the two creatures sharing this cover promises the kind of mythologically rich storytelling that makes Promethea one of the most visually and intellectually adventurous series of 2002.