Sam and Twitch #21

Part two of "The John Doe Affair" arrives in this 2001 Image series billed as hard-edged crime fiction, and Ashley Wood's cover painting sets the mood perfectly — a lean, intense figure with wild dark hair levels a pistol directly at the viewer, the dim glow of apartment windows flickering behind him and the word "Sammy" scratched into the grimy wall at his back. The moody, painterly atmosphere captures exactly the kind of street-level tension that makes Sam and Twitch such a compelling corner of the Spawn universe. With Todd McFarlane writing and Alex Maleev handling interior art, this is crime comics at its most atmospheric.