Punisher #40

Garth Ennis and Leandro Fernandez deliver the fourth chapter of "Man of Stone" in this Marvel MAX installment, with Tim Bradstreet's cover setting a punishing tone: Frank Castle lies flat on his back amid rubble and ruins, pistol raised skyward at a menacing military attack helicopter bearing down on him. It's a stark, ground-level composition that captures the Punisher at his most exposed — outgunned but unbroken — exactly the kind of raw, no-frills tension that made this mature-readers series stand apart in 2007.