Sheriff of Babylon #3

Tom King and Mitch Gerads' The Sheriff of Babylon continues with issue #3, and John Paul Leon's cover sets an atmosphere of intimate tension — two women in a warmly lit interior, one seated and sipping from a small cup while the other, dressed in white with a hijab, tends to her hair, a handbag and unseen objects resting on the table between them and a cat lurking in the shadows below. The Guardian's pull quote on the cover — praising the series' grasp of "the volatility and cynical realpolitik of post-invasion Baghdad" — speaks to just how seriously this Vertigo series engages with its setting. Published in April 2016, this is a grounded, beautifully rendered chapter in one of the most compelling crime stories of that year.