Sin City: The Big Fat Kill #3

Frank Miller's stark, high-contrast cover for issue three of this five-part Sin City arc delivers an immediate gut-punch: a curly-haired figure plunges toward the viewer, one desperate hand thrust outward, while a tumbling soda can and scattered debris fill the pitch-black void around him. The tagline — "Killing's easy. It's getting rid of the bodies that's hard." — sets the tone with Miller's trademark dry menace. Midway through The Big Fat Kill, this 1995 Dark Horse release captures exactly the kind of off-balance, falling-into-darkness dread that makes Sin City so compelling.