Scalped #21

Scalped #21 kicks off "The Gravel in Your Guts" with a cover by Jock that's as tense and spare as the series itself — a weathered older man looms large in the background while a grim-faced officer in uniform stands in the foreground, a revolver at his side and a child tucked behind him, all rendered in a stark palette of gold, shadow, and white. Jason Aaron and R.M. Guéra's Vertigo crime saga has always thrived on this kind of quiet, loaded menace, and this image captures that atmosphere perfectly. If you've been following the Prairie Rose Indian Reservation's darkest corners, this 2008 installment promises the kind of morally complicated tension the series does so well.